The Internet Explorer Testcenter welcome page: Clarification & Corrections
Earlier this week, we published a number of new tests for web standardson our IE Test Center page, together with a harness to run them automatically in your browser as well as cross-browser pass rate statistics for these new tests. We quickly received web community feedback that the pass rate data in the first table was prone to misinterpretation.
What the Test Center Pass Rates Include:
The pass rates on the site are specific to only the 104 new test cases we just submitted to the W3C in conjunction with the first IE9 Platform Preview. As part of our regular involvement with the Working Groups across a number of W3C standards, we have identified a number of interoperability issues that are not yet covered by the standards body's existing test suite. We should note that the test results are only for the Windows versions of all the browsers in the test results table.
Pass Rates and Vendor-specific Feature Implementations
These tests were written and submitted as standard test cases, not IE9 Platform Preview demo pages. Thus, the cases don’t include any vendor-specific prefixes. By contrast, our IE9 Test Drive samples include extra code to support the vendor-specific versions of certain features (e.g. -moz-border-radius for Mozilla’s implementation of CSS3’s border-radius). Standards test cases do not and cannot include proprietary properties, methods, or markup.
In the case of border-radius, Opera 10.50 and recent Google Chrome builds support the un-prefixed version of the property. The latest major releases of Firefox and Safari do not. The pass rates for the current Firefox and Safari versions simply reflect that they require vendor specific prefixes and do not yet support the web standard markup. This wasn’t meant to imply that those browsers don’t have support for rounded corners using some markup but simply reflects the fact that they require -moz/-webkit CSS declarations to render them. From an interoperability standpoint, web authors cannot use the same markup across these browsers to achieve the same results today.
Test Case Fixes
Commenters on this blog and beyond also reported some bugs in a handful of the test cases we submitted for review on Tuesday. Thank you! This is exactly why there is a test case review process. Feedback on the test cases helps the web development community. We welcome it. We have updated the tests to reflect the initial feedback to ensure the cases are useful to the web standards community. The known issues and related pass/fail updates are described below:
- CSS3 Selectors
- The :nth-child-selector and CSS comments test case assumes that comments can occur between the multiplier and the n term i.e. that in the (an+b) expression, a and n are separate tokens. This was a bug in the test case. The IE9 Platform Preview should ignore this selector and thus fail the test case. Firefox 3.6, Opera 10.50, Safari 4.0, and Chrome 4.0 all pass.
- DOM Level 2 Style
- The https://samples.msdn.microsoft.com/ietestcenter/domstyle/showdomstyletest.htm?./invalidMedia.htm test case verifies that @import rules inside an @media block are ignored but the case had a bug and checked for that result improperly. The first IE9 Platform Preview now fails this test. Firefox 3.6 passes this test. Opera 10.5 still fails the test. Safari 4.0 and Chrome 4.0 still pass this test.
- Both the Syntax for backgroundRepeat and negative border width test cases had Javascript in them that mistakenly used an IE-only Javascript extension allowing elements to be referenced directly using their ID attribute value, which is supported for compatibility reasons. The JavaScript in the test case was changed. The IE9 Platform Preview still passes both test cases. Firefox 3.6 now passes both of these test cases. Opera 10.50 still passes both tests. Safari 4.0 still passes the backgroundRepeat test and still fails the negative border width test. Chrome 4.0 still fails both test cases.
We thank the community for the feedback we’ve received so far. We have updated our tests, and the pass rate data, and submitted these updates to the standards body.
This is part of the standards process: a conversation leading to consensus. The one request we have is to please have these conversations within the W3C working groups instead of on various blogs. We have a link to each working group’s mailing list in the table on this blog post. We can have a healthy discussion about each test case in a threaded, archived format where everyone interested can participate and anyone can follow-along.
What’s Next
As we continue developing and testing IE9, we will continue submitting our test cases to the W3C and the wider community. Conformance and interoperability can only be measured and achieved with the help of solid, complete test suites. Modern browsers should be able to demonstrate their conformance to web standards. Test suites that identify cross-browser incompatibilities help all browsers make progress.
Jason Upton
Test Manager
Comments
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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March 19, 2010
"Test suites that identify cross-browser incompatibilities help all browsers make progress." Like Sputnik :) Thank you, IE, for making the web better bye supporting these wonderful free standards. :D Any response to Haavards other post? http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2010/03/16/microsoft-letterAnonymous
March 19, 2010
@Daniel and @Haavards I can only guess what Microsoft will do here. A friend of mine sells H.264 hardware to the TV industry, which is THE standard for video in Hollywood. I imagine that it won't be much different than what Apple has done. http://www.apple.com/quicktime/technologies/h264/faq.htmlAnonymous
March 19, 2010
"A friend of mine sells H.264 hardware to the TV industry, which is THE standard for video in Hollywood. I imagine that it won't be much different than what Apple has done." That does not mean IE should not include both. Buy anyway, I'll wait for Microsoft's response for now. Night :)Anonymous
March 19, 2010
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March 19, 2010
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March 19, 2010
@ms2ger Only because, as explained in the blog entry, there were problems in the test cases themselves that once fixed caused IE's score to drop. I appreciate the effort in submitting test cases as well. Like I said, the IE team seems to be making excellent progress and doing a lot of things right, which is why the blatantly disingenuous test centre page is so disappointing.Anonymous
March 19, 2010
And that was me above, only logged in, obviously :-)Anonymous
March 19, 2010
Go IE team, go! Now THAT's the way to handle feedback - fixing wherever applicable, explaining wherever misunderstood, asking standards bodies wherever unclear ^_^. Keep up the good ear thumbs up.Anonymous
March 19, 2010
If that guy from Opera want MS to support Theora he might do well to offer MS a guaranteed waifer of liability for possible patent issues. You know, if anybody decided to sue MS for another billlion or so dollars. They are never going to take the risk otherwise to introduce support for a new format.Anonymous
March 20, 2010
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March 20, 2010
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March 20, 2010
Any progress that IE makes is good. The disingenuous comparisons with other browsers are galling. For YEARS IE has been ruining the web and forcing everyone to dumb things down to its level. How about acknowledging that? How about a sincere apology? How about acknowledging the destructive effect of all of the attempts to subvert standards in the past? It's like Darth Vader rocking up and wondering why everyone isn't happy he came to the party. Have a little shame for the awful things you've done.Anonymous
March 20, 2010
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March 20, 2010
Just a quick note. If you publish something on your blog, you will get responses on other peoples blogs. That's the nature of this beast we call the web. If you want feedback on mailing lists only, publish your stuff to mailing lists only. Anyway, good to see that you have listened and updated the test center page.Anonymous
March 20, 2010
Fails: http://www.tapper-ware.net/stable/web.dom.stresstest.transform/Anonymous
March 20, 2010
@hAl You said: "If that guy from Opera want MS to support Theora he might do well to offer MS a guaranteed waifer of liability for possible patent issues." I'd highly advise you to look into the reasons behind campaigns for Theora codec support before making what is quite possible the most completely uninformed comment I have ever seen on the issue. Maybe my sense of humour is a bit off - was your post meant as a joke? Or are you actually seriously arguing AGAINST Theora because you think there may be patent issues?Anonymous
March 20, 2010
@lucideer I'm pretty sure hAl was being serious since, given the evolution of the codec over the years, Theora could infringe on methods patented by MPEG-LA licensors or others and used in their respective codecs or MPEG codecs to which they have contributed. If Theora infringes and MS implements and distributes it, it probably won't be long until MS is defending themselves in a court in east Texas. Concerning alternative codecs to H.264, I think VC-1 would be better than Theora. Sure, it isn't free to implement, but it is comparable in quality to H.264, requires less CPU to decode, is supported in embedded chipsets, and doesn't have per-stream royalties. The main downside is the lack of a standardized audio codec for it. In the future, maybe Dirac could fill this gap.Anonymous
March 20, 2010
@Tony Schreiner [MSFT] or @IE team: IE 9 preview currently implements 28% of SVG () Opera, Chrome, Safari and Firefox implement 94% , 87%, 82% and 72% respectively. What are your plans to the final IE 9 version? 30% 40% 95? Please can you share with us your goals with more precision? Thank you very much () http://www.codedread.com/svg-support.phpAnonymous
March 20, 2010
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March 21, 2010
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March 21, 2010
I am a novice trying to learn how to make good use of my time with this computer since I broke my back approx. a year ago. I was advised to start with google since it was more intuitive and easier to learn the basics on. I recently tried to switch to bing and have google my default browser. What a mistake, in one day I managed to get expelled because I forgot my password for hotmail'live' which I don't want but must have clicked something to get it. Trying to reset it is a maddening circular nonsensical "excercise". I am a beginner But I was an active member of mensa until I had to start taking srong Painkillers for my back. What must someone do to get to where I can start complaining about what these accomplished computer users don't like?Anonymous
March 21, 2010
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March 22, 2010
@hAl "If that guy from Opera want MS to support Theora he might do well to offer MS a guaranteed [waiver] of liability for possible patent issues. You know, if anybody decided to sue MS for another [billion] or so dollars." First of all, there are no known patent issues with Ogg Theora, and Opera doesn't hold the existing, fully licensed VP3 patents, so for what reason would Opera offer protection against patent lawsuits, especially to a corporation that has more spare pocket change the entire net worth of their company? "Ah, but what about submarine patents?" you might ask. The problem with that reasoning is that there could be unknown patents on ANY technology Microsoft implements. Take SVG for example. Would you be surprised if there were patents on SVG that we don't know about? Any new feature is just as much attack surface for patents as it is for viruses. Furthermore, do you honestly think that a random video patent is more likely to apply to Theora than H.264? If you look at the situation with ActiveX and Netscape Plug-Ins, dropping Netscape Plug-In support didn't benefit Microsoft at all from the standpoint of patents. Any submarine patent would most likely need to have been filed prior to 1999, cover a technology unique to VP3/Theora, and the patent holder would have had to be sitting on the patent for more than a decade, in spite of it's use in VP3 (and probably newer On2 codecs) and in WinAMP (which was owned by AOL). "They are never going to take the risk otherwise to introduce support for a new format." While I won't argue that the risk is nonexistent, I doubt the risk of adding any other feature would involve any less risk. For instance, if the H.264 codec implementation has a security exploit that results in damage to customer data and property, they could be sued just as easily, and because H.264 is a newer codec, it has a longer period of exposure to submarine patent risk. The real reason for going with H.264 is that the format locks people into proprietary software if they want to be protected from patent lawsuits. Microsoft is essentially exploiting codec momentum and U.S. patent law to promote their own proprietary products.Anonymous
March 22, 2010
Speaking of features that Microsoft has introduced ... Just a few minutes ago, I found myself following a link, only to discover that it lead to a page that had since been taken down, and replaced with something belonging to one of the bad guys. A script is present on the new page that will not let one leave or close the window, until one "agrees" to a download. In the old days (last year), there was a simple, relatively easy solution when one ran into a page set up by the kind of lowlife who makes use of forced downloads. One would hit "alt-control-delete", and then end the application corresponding to the offending page. The good news for our good friends, the hackers, is that Microsoft is in their corner. Now, if one uses alt-control-delete to close one window, the system closes all of them. If one then goes back into Internet Explorer and hopes to open the other windows - happy surprise - one finds that this is an all or nothing deaal. One either gets back all of the pages, including the one with the forced downloads, or one gets back none of them, and accepts that a certain amount of one's time and work will go to waste. Gee guys, thanks a heap.Anonymous
March 22, 2010
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March 23, 2010
Stifu, Sylvain was originally making the same point: yes, ACID3 is misleading in exactly the same way as the chart of test results from the new tests.Anonymous
March 23, 2010
I can only guess what Microsoft will do here. A friend of mine sells H.264 hardware to the TV industry, which is THE standard for video in Hollywood.Anonymous
March 23, 2010
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March 23, 2010
@Matt: the main difference is that the Acid3 wasn't made with the intent to mislead people (the Acid3 author admitted he regretted certain things, and learnt from his mistakes).Anonymous
March 23, 2010
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March 23, 2010
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March 27, 2010
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