IE 8 Beta 1 and Acid 3 released

Yesterday Microsoft unveiled the first beta version of Internet Explorer 8. Promised is, that this version includes better predictability when designing sites, full support for CSS 2.1 at release to manufacturing, and integrated developer tools to quickly debug HTML, CSS and scripts in a 'visual environment'. “A lot of the end user or consumer features are not featured on this build because it really is targeted at the developers and the designers” according to Matthew Lepsen, Microsoft IE development team. User features that are included are basicly integrated Live services.

Three days ago the Web Standards Project (WaSP) released the new Acid 3 test. “The Acid3 Test is designed to test specifications for Web 2.0, and exposes potential flaws in implementations of the public ECMAScript 262 and W3C Document Object Model 2 standards. Collectively known as DOM Scripting, it is these technologies that enable advanced page interactivity and power many advanced web applications such as web-based email and online office applications.” - WaSP.

DrunkenFirst.com took some screen shots of browser Acid 3 test scores. They call it a 'Fail parade'.

I can't agree more with these pitiful scores:

• Browser: Camino 1.51 on Mac OS 10.5
  Score: 49/100
• Browser: Firefox 2 on Mac OS 10.5
  Score: 50/100
• Browser: Firefox 3 on Mac OS 10.5
  Score: 56/100
• Browser: Firefox 2 on Windows XP
  Score: 50/100
• Browser: Firefox 3 on Windows XP
  Score: 59/100
• Browser: Safari 3 Latest Build on Mac OS 10.5
  Score: 87/100
• Browser: Opera 9.24 on Windows Vista
  Score: 46/100
• Browser: Opera 9.5 - Score: 61/100
• Browser: Konqueror built from SVN 2008.03.06 - Score: 63/100
• Browser: Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP
  Score: 11/100
• Browser: Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista / XP
  Score: 12/100
• Browser: Internet Explorer 8 Beta
  Score: 18/100

Draw your own conclusions. If you still want to try IE8 Beta 1 (for testing sake perhaps): take in mind the install overwrites your current IE installation. You can emulate in IE7 mode though, but it does not render the same as the real IE7.