IE7 to fail standards test

Microsoft's new Internet Explorer 7 browser won't pass a stringent standards test that rivals have embraced.

In its browser blog, Microsoft acknowledged that IE 7 would not pass the Acid2 test from the Web Standards Project (WaSP), which examines a browser's support for W3C recommendations including CSS1, HTML4 and PNG.

"We will not pass this test when IE7 ships," Chris Wilson, lead programme manager for the Web platform in IE, wrote in the IE blog. "We fully recognise that IE is behind the game today in CSS support. We've dug through the Acid2 test and analyzed IE's problems with the test in some great detail, and we've made sure the bugs and features are on our list — however, there are some fairly large and difficult features to implement, and they will not all sort to the top of the stack in IE7."

Standards advocates and Web developers have criticised Microsoft for letting Internet Explorer go without a significant upgrade for years. This spring it became clear that Microsoft would finally address long-standing standards-compliance issues in its planned version 7 upgrade.

Microsoft last week came out with beta version of its Windows Vista operating system and IE7.

Wilson said the broad range of Acid2's demands made it more of a "wish list" than a "compliance test".

"As a wish list, it is really important and useful to my team, but it isn't even intended, in my understanding, as our priority list for IE7," Wilson wrote.

WaSP responded positively to the announcement, hailing Microsoft's standards to-do list and its openness in acknowledging the test.

"While it doesn't hit everything we might like, and we won't see most of it until Beta 2, it's a pretty impressive list for a release that by all accounts is primarily about security and UI features," WaSP member Chris Kaminski wrote. "Even more impressive than the contents of the list, though, is that it's even available outside the Redmond campus. Having been through this 'work with Microsoft' thing once before in the late '90s, I can assure you this sort of openness is a radical departure from the Microsoft of old and as good a reason as any for optimism that this is just the beginning, and we can expect even more and better in IE 7.5 and beyond."

WaSP launched seven years ago to goad Microsoft and Netscape into heeding W3C recommendations. These days, the group takes a less confrontational approach than it used to, working closely with software companies like Macromedia and Microsoft before products are released.

Microsoft's competitors sounded a less forgiving note in responding to the news.

"I think they should take the time required to do this right," said Hakon Lie, chief technology officer of Opera Software in Oslo, Norway, who threw down the Acid2 gauntlet to Microsoft in a column this spring. "We're not going to see another IE for another several years, and this is their chance to show that they really care about standards, as they've been saying. They've used so many years to create IE 7, they can take the extra month required to make it pass."

Lie said Opera was "very close" to passing Acid2. Apple has already said that its Safari browser passes the test in preliminary builds. The Mozilla Foundation said it was committed to "full support" of Acid2 in its Firefox browser but did not say when it expected to pass the test.