By SCOTT DEWING
Published: October 2008

That's good thinking there, Microsoft. Create yet another version of your browser, version 8, and have it finally pass the Acid2 test. Good browsers can pass this test with flying colors and render Web pages properly. They don't freak out on the code and return rainbow patterns and garbled text that make end-users feel as though they're on some sort of bad acid trip with the Web becoming a multi-colored digital dragon threatening to suck out and upload their minds into the matrix of the Internet. Okay, maybe it's not quite that bad, but browsers that can't pass the Acid2 test are bound to run into problems with interpreting and displaying Web site designs and content.

The Acid2 test was created by the Web Standards Project (WaSP). Founded in 1998, WaSP "fights for standards that reduce the cost and complexity of development while increasing the accessibility and long-term viability of any site published on the Web." It's no fun having to go back and recode websites so that they work with the latest version of Internet Explorer or any other browser for that matter. Acid2 is a special test page for web browsers that enables browser vendors such as Microsoft to test whether or not their browser correctly supports features that web designers commonly use.

The Acid2 test packs a lot of compatibility tests into one page. The output, that is, what is displayed in the browser window, defies the complexity of the test. If the browser makes the grade on the Acid2 test, what's displayed is merely the text "Hello World!" and a classic yellow smiley face with green eyes. If, on the other hand, the browser has problems with the test page, the smiley face gets all distorted and displays a bright red box with stray chunks of black, yellow and pink pixels.

This is exactly what happened when I ran both IE 6 and IE 7 through the Acid2 test wringer. When I run the test using Mozilla Firefox 3, I get the yellow smiley face with the green eyes. To put it simply, Firefox works because the browser was developed to meet standards set by WaSP as well as the larger and more influential standards organization, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Microsoft's browsers don't pass the Acid2 test because Microsoft built those browsers based on its own standards rather than community standards established by organizations such as WaSP and W3C. This fits Microsoft's M.O. Why follow community-based standards—especially those from the dreaded, pseudo-Communist open-source community—when you can just create your own standards and then bend everybody to your will? This strategy has worked quite well for Microsoft and its shareholders over the past couple of decades. For example, own and set the standard for the operating system that makes a PC more than just a useless collection of plastic, metal and silicon, and you own the computing software market, which Microsoft does. Some have even dared to call it a "monopoly" in which Microsoft wields way too much power.

This is why a recent posting at The Windows Internet Explorer Weblog entitled "Internet Explorer 8 and Acid2: A Milestone" caught my eye. "As a team, we’ve spent the last year heads down working hard on IE8," wrote Dean Hachamovitch, the general manager of the Internet Explorer development team. "Last week, we achieved an important milestone that should interest web developers. IE8 now renders the “Acid2 Face” correctly..."

This may not seem like an important milestone to the average end-user, but a milestone it is indeed as it marks a shift in Microsoftian philosophy. Rather than ignoring the standards community, Microsoft seems to be stepping onto the standards' bandwagon. Well, if not fully getting aboard, they at least have demonstrated that they have their thumb out hoping to catch a ride. A beta version of IE8 was released to the public last month.

Playing ball, rather than hard-ball, with the standards community is an important step for Microsoft and may signal a step in the right direction for the multi-billion dollar software company whose future is increasingly threatened by the increased prominence of open-source (and free) software and an overall paradigm shift toward online (and often free) applications such as Google Apps. These trends are a twin threat to Microsoft's continued dominance in the global software market. Rather than aggressively changing its business model, Microsoft has been aggressively battling the open-source and online software trends. The problem with this strategy is that you can't defeat a trend, especially if it's a good one.

And, for better or for worse, the trend with users choosing Internet Explorer over other browsers, has been downward since 2002 when IE was the browser of choice for 85 percent of Web surfers. That number has steadily dwindled and today is at 55 percent. Meanwhile, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft's open-source competitor, has steadily climbed from 26 percent in 2006 when it was first released to 40 percent today. This represents a huge shift in user base away from Microsoft and to an open-source, free product.

With IE8, Microsoft hopes to begin reeling some of those users back. It'll be a tough battle, especially since end-users seem to have stopped drinking the Microsoft Kool-Aid and begun to demand good software for free.