Thunderbird 3 Alpha Fails Acid Test

Acid2 and Acid3 are two test suites, that check how well modern browsers follow the web standards.

And, you probably have heard that Firefox 3 passes Acid2 test, thanks to the new Gecko 1.9 rendering engine used in it. Now, what about Thunderbird 3?

Thunderbird 3 alpha (code named as shredder), released a few days back,  also uses the same Gecko 1.9 rendering engine. So naturally, one would expect to see the same result as Firefox 3, right? Well, you are in for a surprise.

How to perform Acid2 and Acid3 test in Thunderbird 3 Alpha?

1. Launch Thunderbird 3. Select Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Config Editor.
2. Click "I''ll be carefull, I promise!" button.
3. Enter javascript.allow.mailnews into the filter text box and change its value to true.
4. Close the options window.
5. Now select Tools -> Error Console.
6. Enter the following text into the code text box (as a single line, no line breaks) and hit enter. The corresponding page will get loaded into the message display area of Thunderbird.

For Acid2 Test:

var threePane = Components.classes['@mozilla.org/appshell/window-mediator;1'].getService(Components.interfaces.nsIWindowMediator).getMostRecentWindow("mail:3pane");gBrowser = threePane.document.getElementById("messagepane");gBrowser.loadURI("http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html#top", null, null);

For Acid3 Test:

var threePane = Components.classes['@mozilla.org/appshell/window-mediator;1'].getService(Components.interfaces.nsIWindowMediator).getMostRecentWindow("mail:3pane");gBrowser = threePane.document.getElementById("messagepane");gBrowser.loadURI("http://acid3.acidtests.org", null, null);

Result

Acid2: Thunderbird 3 Alpha failed the Acid2 test. Yes Firefox, we know you are laughing. Your cousin just failed. Instead of giving us a laughing smiley we got the below result. Failed!

Acid3: Thunderbird 3 Alpha got a score of 67/100. This however was better than Firefox (61/100) and IE (in which Acid3 was a complete disaster).

 

 

So, Thunderbird3 failed in Acid2 test. Remember that Firefox 3, IE8, Safari had all passed Acid2. In Acid3 test, it got a score that is slightly above other players, but is still not a score to boast about.What does these results prove?

Nothing! Thunderbird 3 has a long way to go and it's still in the embryonic form. There is a lot of work still to be done to make shredder into Thunderbird 3. Cheers to the Mozilla Messaging team for giving us Thunderbird 3 Alpha. (But guys, we really do expect Acid2 and Acid3 compatibility in the Final TB 3.0. Please don't disappoint us :) )

Download Thunderbird 3 Alpha (shredder) here.