On December 19th 2007, Microsoft, through Dean Hachamovitch, IE General Manager, announced what he referred to as a milestone in the development of Internet Explorer 8. The successor of Internet Explorer 7 managed to render the Acid2 Face correctly with the browser running in IE8 standards mode. For Microsoft, IE8 passing the Acid2 Face collection of tests is nothing but good news, and web developers certainly understand the value of a browser with extensive standards support. Essentially, with making IE8 standards compliant, the Redmond company is guaranteeing a high level of interoperability for the browser.

A little over a week ago, Microsoft's latest internal build of IE8, dating back to December 12th, seemed to outperform all of its rivals. According to Sandi Hardmeier, Internet Explorer 8 outperformed Firefox, Safari and Opera in the Acid2 Face. Hardmeier still has a post with screenshots illustrating the comparison of the four major browsers. As you will be able to see, neither Firefox, nor Opera, nor Safari came even close to IE8. Bug 289480 (acid2) was updated on Bugzilla under the title "Mozilla doesn't pass the acid2 (acid 2) test" to reflect the fact that the latest Beta build of Firefox 3.0 dailed the Acid2 Face test.

However, eight days later and the situation is completely different. As you will be able to see from the screenshots at the bottom of this article, Opera 9, Firefox 3.0 Beta 2 and Safari 3.0.4 all pass the Acis2 Face test, just as Internet Explorer 8. The sole exceptions at this point are Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2.0.0.11. The bad news for IE users is that IE8 is planned for late 2008, early 2009. In this manner, IE8 will offer in approximately a year what Firefox 3.0 Beta 2, Opera and Safari are delivering today.