Additional Tests Submitted to the W3C CSS 2.1 Test Suite

It’s been just over five months since the MIX08 conference and IE8 Beta 1. One of the things I remain committed to is the furthering of web standards through a comprehensive test suite for each standard. This is necessary to eliminate ambiguities or differences that cause implementation differences between user agents (aka browsers). Those differences create frustration for web developers who are just trying to build web sites that interoperate.

The IE team has been actively working on Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2. In parallel with the CSS 2.1 implementation in the upcoming beta, the IE Test team has been developing test cases against the CSS 2.1 specification. Today we’re happy to announce that we’ve submitted an additional 2524 more test cases to the W3C for inclusion into the CSS 2.1 test suite. This brings the test suite much closer to the necessary breadth needed to ensure that web sites will interoperate. These tests are available on the IE Development Forum until they are fully reviewed by the working group and accepted into the official test suite.

I also want to thank everyone that provided great feedback on the tests we submitted back in March 2008. Based on the feedback on the W3C’s CSS 2.1 Working Group’s mailing list and my March IE Blog post on the subject, we made corrections and design changes to 28 of the 702 test cases we submitted in March. We also deleted 5 cases that became redundant through the other 28 changes. These updated tests are also available on the IE Development Forum until the W3C integrates them. It is this collaboration with the web development community and the W3C that will really make these web standards more reliable and able to create a more predictable web development experience.

This brings Microsoft’s contribution in this suite to 3221 test cases and the entire W3C CSS 2.1 test suite to 3708 test cases. We, the IE team, will continue to work closely with the CSS working group on these tests and listen to any feedback you provide.

In addition to the CSS 2.1 standard, IE8 is supporting the new Accessibility Rich Internet Applications (WAI - ARIA) draft standard in development by the W3C. It provides a way to create web sites that are accessible to people that need Assistive Technologies to help them live and work. We’re using some of the existing test suite to validate our implementation. We also just submitted our first tests to the working group for inclusion into the test suite. They are also available for download on the IE Development Forum until they get included into the W3C test suite. As with the CSS suite, we will continue to work closely with the WAI – ARIA group.

Thanks,

Jason Upton
Test Manager
Internet Explorer