Well the Whole Blogosphere has been talking about IE8 Clearing the Acid2 test. Lets hear to what the IE8 team has to say about the milestone :

As a team, we’ve spent the last year heads down working hard on IE8. Last week, we achieved an important milestone that should interest web developers. IE8 now renders the “Acid2 Face” correctly in IE8 standards mode.

Before I answer the question that I raised in the title of this post, let me tell you what the Acid2 test is all about :

Acid2 is designed to determine how compliant a given web browser is with published HTML. A fully compliant browser displays a smiling yellow face. However, non-compliant browsers show varying degrees of garbage.

Now coming to the announcement regarding IE8 clearing the Acid2 test. Let me tell you IE8 cleared the test when all other standards compliant browsers like Firefox 3, Opera, Safari failed to clear the test. Yes doesn’t that sound suspicious enough.. Yes it does, the Web Standards team has made some changes to Acid2 Test Page, that has made the test to fail for most Standards compliant browsers.

• What changed that broke the test?

It looks like an object element that’s pointing to a non-existent page (http://webstandards.org/404/) should be falling through, but that page is now returning a response status of 200 (success) instead of 404. Was it previously correctly returning a 404 response?

Perhaps this test should be hosted on a separate server, instead of coexisting with a live site like WebStandards.org, so that future mishaps like this don’t happen.

Well that is it, the Acid2 test page is broken at the moment, so I’m not entirely sure if the Microsoft team was a little too early with the announcement. They’d probably try out the alternate test page over at http://www.hixie.ch/tests/evil/acid/002/ and see if IE8 passes the test.

Right now, I’m not entirely convinced about the announcement from the IE8 team. While adherence to Web Standards is a good thing, it wouldn’t be nice if Microsoft announced now that IE8 clears Acid2 only to later discover that it doesn’t.

While Microsoft lovers will hate me for writing this. But I’d love IE8 to stick to Web Standards when it is released. All the best to the Microsoft team with the IE8 project, atleast I’m sticking out with Firefox so I’ve nothing to worry.

For more details see the discussion over at BugZilla.

Here is a rundown into its amazing feature set that Litmus has:

• Web page testing

See screenshots of your web pages in dozens of different browsers within seconds. Lightning-fast speeds mean snappy iterations, letting you solve more cross-browser issues more quickly.

You see your entire page from top to bottom, not just the area visible above the fold.

• Email testing

See screenshots of your email newsletters as they appear across popular email environments. Like our web page testing, email tests are lightning-fast to speed up your workflow.

A screenshot of the email full length is shown so you can ensure the design is perfect throughout.

• One-click publishing

Need to show your client a copy of the compatibility results? With just one click, you can.

All published results have their own permanent URL. An elegantly designed, completely unbranded snapshot of the tests you’ve performed, instantly ready to share.

• Precise bug tracking

Litmus’s tracking system lets you see exactly where the compatibility issues are at any time.

By tagging your results as compatible/incompatible you’ll always know what’s working and what’s not. This is even more valuable in team situations.

• Painless version management

Keep your results super-organised with Litmus’s unique versioning system. As you progress through your testing iterations we keep all your previous tests neatly together, organised on the version timeline.

So if you are a web developer, then Litmus is a must have app that you must have. Go give it a try.

Visit Litmus Homepage

If you are looking for a quick file conversion web app then there is nothing better than You Convert It. Its fast and has no annoying ads currently so if you are in a great rush then You Covert It can be a life saver. Go ahead and try it out today. Other option includes Zamzar.

Notesake is the easiest way that I have seen to take notes. Its elegant and eye catching interface is a sucker and it pulls you into it. NoteSake allows you to take your class notes completely online, enabling you to access them from any computer, at any time.

With some social features built in like Groups, Tagging etc.. Notesake is a must kitty for any serious college student. Ever Since I found Notesake I have been using it, and it is the place where I draft all my posts simply because of its powerful editor.

With NoteSake, you can take your notes during class, share them with a friend, or groups can work together on the same note, all through your laptop. As soon as you have registered, you will be ready to take notes which can then be searched, printed, and organized at your convenience. It’s easy. It’s helpful. It’s free.

Here are some screenshots taken from the Inner workings of Notesake :

Go ahead and complete this amazing tour of Notesake and I am sure at the end of it you’ll definitely fall in love with it, and I am sure you will use it daily from now on. 

• Discover CSS right from your browser
• Extract style sheets and learn new tricks
• X-ray pages to reveal their structure
• Override Other Sites CSS and have fun

• Selector Builder takes the Yuck out of selectors
• Intuitive visual editors let you edit in style
• Modify source code with intelligent CodeSense
• Organize in folders and filter easily

• Instantly Preview anything, even Web Apps
• X-ray’s Inspector finds your applied styles
• Milestones let you mess up without worries
• Weed out errors with the slick Validation tool

So if you are a Web Designer, make sure you add CSSEdit to your design kitty.

Firefox 3 will provide support for new technologies that surely will change the web landscape. One is APNG (the animated portable network graphics format). APNG basically provides an extension to the existing PNG format by providing animation for it. APNG is been available for quite some time now. Added advantage of APNG is that it is backward compatible meaning that pages will work fine with browsers that don’t support APNG by rendering itself as a regular PNG.

Check out the demo at Mozilla Labs. You need to view the demo with a beta of Firefox 3 to see the animated PNGs in action. If you’re running Firefox 2.x, you’ll see a static PNG. Learn more about APNGs on the Mozilla Wiki.

The other bit of added innovation is the support for the <canvas>. Its an extension to HTML and will make it to the upcoming HTML 5 Standards, that lets you draw and animate simple vector graphics.

Firefox is definitely doing some serious work here and now Microsoft will be under huge pressure to add support to these technologies in future versions of Internet Explorer. I am sure that other browsers like Opera will add support for these elements in the future versions.

Onstage a competitor to the popular project management app Basecamp has introduced a free version of its Online project management tool today. And surprisingly Onstage beats Basecamp comprehensively in all departments.. Here is a feature comparison between Basecamp and Onstage…

Looking at the comparison above Onstage has taken a big leap forward by beating Basecamp in all its versions until the 49$ per month plan.. But why pay money when you can get things done for free.. Also Onstage has a very attractive and easy to use layout that matches well upto the standards set by the more popular Basecamp.

Also Onstage some very slick features in the pipeline such as

• API – Users can integrate OnStage with their own systems and build additional tools.
• Project Management – The plan is to offer more robust project management features (such as task dependencies and key performance indicators).
• Integrated Chat – Talk to the project contributors at the same time while you work upon the project.
• Collaboration – Yes Real time document collaboration that allows multiple members to work on the same document at the same time..

So check out Onstage today and discover one of the best Project Management Web Apps out there.

Via Seans Blog