IE 8 Standards Compliance Test

[There's an Update at the End of This Post]

I downloaded Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 from here. I just had to test Microsoft's claim about Standards Compliance.

First, an explanation of how I'm testing it. I'm using the acid test from webstandards.org. You load the page in a browser and you should see the following (this is in Opera 9.5 Beta, which passes with flying colors).




Firefox 2.0.0.12 gets close, but no cigar.




Internet Explorer 7 fails miserably.



Now for IE 8 Beta 1



Well, well, it passes. I then switched on IE 7 Emulation mode. I had to restart IE 8 for that to work. That's more than a little annoying. They couldn't just rerender the page?

But here's the acid test on IE 8 Beta 1 in IE 7 Emulation Mode:



And of course, it looks like IE 7.

So, Microsoft's claim of Compliance seems to be true. But really guys, why do I have to restart the browser to turn compliance on and off. Can you say annoying!

Oh, and check out the system requirements. Notice the difference between Vista and XP.



That's an eight fold difference. Nothing says "My OS is bloatware" like an eightfold memory requirement difference from one version of the OS to the next.


UPDATE: I only tested IE 8 on Acid Test 2, not aware of the existence of Acid Test 3. So I ran that test, and it failed. But then again, so did Firefox and Opera.