This doesn’t constitute passing the full test, as the resulting page needs to look exactly like the reference image, but it means they’re very close.

These fixes won’t appear in the upcoming Opera 9.5, since it’s in the stabilization phase as it approaches release (just like any new Acid3-related changes in Firefox won’t make it into Firefox 3), but will probably find their way into the next major version.

We’re in the home stretch. Opera’s nearly there, but WebKit is close behind. WebKit could still catch up while Opera polishes off the rendering issues, in which case Safari would be the first browser to pass both Acid2 and Acid3.

Congratulations to the Opera team, and best of luck in the final lap of the race!

Update: Just a few hours later, and WebKit has caught up, also passing 100/100. And as they point out, it’s a public build, one you can download and try out yourself! The race to pass is going to be very close. Though at this point, it’s almost certain that WebKit will be the first to be publicly accessible.

(via CSS3.info. More at OperaWatch and The Good Life.)

It looks like there’s a server error on www.webstandards.org, and I’m trying to report it—but emailing them is just kicking back “user unknown” errors, and the spam protection on their blog refuses to let me comment, claiming that my user-agent has changed since I read the post. Um, no, I may have looked at it with more than one browser, but the one that loaded it is the one that’s submitting it.

So, Web Standards People, you want to fix your test?

Fix your 404 page.

Rows 4-5 test nested <object> support. The intent of the spec is that if a remote object cannot be retrieved, the browser will instead display the content inside it, on the HTML page itself.

One of the objects is trying to load content from http://www.webstandards.org/404/. Normally this fails, and the browser displays the fallback content — the eyes on the happy face. Right now that page is returning an HTTP status code of “200 OK” instead of “404 Not Found” — so the browsers, including Opera 9, Safari 3, Konqueror 3 and Firefox 3 beta, are all dutifully showing the content of that page in a tiny rectangle with scrollbars.

Update: Thanks to several Slashdot posters for pointing out that the test author, Ian Hickson, has a second copy of the test that points to a different URL for the <object> fallback test, and currently works as expected.

I did a double-take. iCab? Das Internet-Taxi für den Mac? The browser with the nice “Make iCab smile” campaign to encourage non-broken HTML on websites but CSS capabilities that have rivaled Netscape 4 as little better than a bad joke? That has been in perpetual beta for years with no sign of shipping a final release?

So I did the only thing I could do. I downloaded the new beta and tried it. Not only did it nearly pass Acid2 (there was a narrow white line across the middle of the face) but it actually handled all the layouts on my own site… something which it had always failed at spectacularly before.

The WaSP Buzz posted a congratulatory note to both this morning. Strangely, iCab is the first browser available to the general public that passes Acid2. The up-to-date Safari is still sitting inside Apple’s development labs, and while you can download the source for the updated Konqueror, you’ll have to wait for KDE 3.4.2—or possibly 3.5—to be able to use it yourself without running a bleeding-edge desktop. Update: Apple has just launched CVS access to WebCore, putting Safari in the same situation as Konqueror: you can download and compile the latest source code if you want, but if you just want to grab an installer, you’re gonna have to wait.