About a month ago Dean Hachamovitch, the General Manager for Internet Explorer 8 released the news that IE8 passes the Acid2 test. In this article, we’ll be taking a look at how the current browsers stand up to the next generation of web standards with the Acid3 test.

Acid2 is a test intended to identify rendering flaws in web browsers, often raised as a result of neglecting to follow the proper standards for HTML and CSS. The Acid3 test is the successor to this, and primarily focuses on scripting and document object model handling.

It should be noted that the Acid3 is still under development, and that its author, Ian Hickson, has stated that:

The Acid3 test IS NOT READY. Goodness gracious people, it’s in the middle of being done! There are sections that are incomplete, some that are wrong, and so on! 

Despite this, I’m going to throw caution to the wind and give you an early look at some of the results. The test now gives a score out of 100, with a point being scored for every test that passes. Obviously, the results with a higher score indicate that they handle the test better. Below you can find a table with the results collected:

Of course, these results should be taken with a pinch of salt as the test is still under development, but I think one of the more interesting results is that Safari on the iPhone fares better than Safari 3 under Leopard. Does this mean that the rendering engine on the iPhone is a newer version than the main Safari browser?

I look forward to bringing you more results when the test nears completion, but if any of you would like to contribute your results for other browsers and versions, please do so in the comments and I will add them to this post.

Update: Thanks Matt for the Opera 9.50 results.