Acid1, originally called the Box Acid Test, was a test page for

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

s. It was developed in October 1998 and was important in establishing baseline

interoperability Interoperability is a characteristic of a product or system to work with other products or systems. While the term was initially defined for information technology or systems engineering services to allow for information exchange, a broader defi ...

between early web browsers, especially for the

Cascading Style Sheets Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone techno ...

1.0 specification. As with

acid tests The Acid Tests were a series of parties held by author Ken Kesey primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area during the mid-1960s, centered on the use of and advocacy for the psychedelic drug LSD, commonly known as "acid". LSD was not made illegal ...

for gold which produce a quick and obvious assessment of the quality of a piece of metal, the web acid tests were designed to produce a clear indication of a browser's compliance to

web standards Web standards are the formal, non-proprietary standards and other technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web. In recent years, the term has been more frequently associated with the trend of endorsing a set of s ...

History

Acid1 tests many features on one page against a reference image. Acid1 was developed by Todd Fahrner, who was frustrated with the lack of stringent tests to improve browser interoperability. After looking at tests developed by Braden McDaniel that used reference renderings to clarify the intended result, Fahrner developed a comprehensive test that resulted in a quirky-looking graphic. In 1999, the test was incorporated into the CSS1 test suite. The text used in Acid1 is an allusion to T. S. Eliot's poem

The Hollow Men "The Hollow Men" (1925) is a poem by the modernist writer T. S. Eliot. Like much of his work, its themes are overlapping and fragmentary, concerned with post–World War I Europe under the Treaty of Versailles (which Eliot despised: compare "Ge ...

. Acid1 is included as an offline

Easter egg Easter eggs, also called Paschal eggs, are eggs that are decorated for the Christian feast of Easter, which celebrates the resurrection of Jesus. As such, Easter eggs are common during the season of Eastertide (Easter season). The oldest tr ...

in Internet Explorer 5 for Mac OS, accessible by typing ' about: tasman', with the text replaced by the names of the developers. By early 2008, all major browsers passed the Acid1 test.Acid Test Results in Popular Browsers
Acid1 has served as inspiration for

Acid2 Acid2 is a webpage that test web browsers' functionality in displaying aspects of HTML markup, CSS 2.1 styling, PNG images, and data URIs. The test page was released on 13 April 2005 by the Web Standards Project. The Acid2 test page will be ...

and

Acid3 The Acid3 test is a web test page from the Web Standards Project that checks a web browser's compliance with elements of various web standards, particularly the Document Object Model (DOM) and JavaScript. If the test is successful, the results ...

References

{{Reflist

External links

The Acid1 Test

Original home of Acid1 on Todd Fahrner's website
Acid tests Web software Computer-related introductions in 1999 Test items de:Acid (Browsertests)#Acid sv:Acid webbläsartester#Acid1

History

See also

References

External links