I’ve posted about browsers in the past, and even compared all major ones in what became a quite popular blog post. Yesterday though, Apple made me a happier guy by including the first Acid2-compatible official release of Safari with the new OSX 10.4.3 update. This means if you’re using Safari on OSX Tiger, you’re watching the web as it is meant to be displayed.

For those who don’t know what Acid 2 means, here’s a quick rundown:

Acid2 is a test page for web browsers published by The Web Standards Project (WaSP). It has been written to help browser vendors make sure their products correctly support features that web designers would like to use. These features are part of existing standards but haven’t been interoperably supported by major browsers. Acid2 tries to change this by challenging browsers to render Acid2 correctly before shipping.

Passing the Acid 2 test is a very big thing for web standards and web browsers - it means a browser correctly supports web standards and upcoming features. Safari is now the first officially released browser to pass the test 100% (early nightly releases of Safari and some recent Opera 9 betas did it too, but not for the general public). Way to go!

Want to see if your browser supports web standards and passes the Acid 2 test? Click here to run it, and compare how it displays with the reference rendering (how it should look). Right now, Safari does 100%, Firefox is getting close, and IE tears a hole in the fabric of space-time.

Update: Molly notes on IE and Acid 2

Molly posted earlier with several updates about the WaSP, their SXSW planned panel and more importantly, about Chris Wilson (of the Microsoft IE team) on Acid 2. According to Chris, the IE team has their eyes set on the Acid 2 test and understands that the webdev community cares about it. As such, they mention Acid 2 compliance is on the slate, even though as early as IE 7. A good sign.