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Contest for the best ACID3 test

January 14th, 2008 by Dustin Brewer

Ian Hickson has announced on his web site that he is running a contest to come up with some great JavaScript (EMCAScript 3) tests for ACID3. Ian has set aside some criteria for the test that need to be followed but once you think you meet the requirements and feel the test is effective he has requested you email it you him. Currently there are about 84 sub tests and Ian is shooting for an even 100 subtests, so there is a lot of room for some good browser tests.

1. The test must consist of the body of a JavaScript function which returns 5 when the test passes, and which throws an exception otherwise. It doesn’t matter what kind of exception.
2. The test must compile with no syntax errors in Firefox 2, IE 7, Opera 9.25, and Safari 3. (You can use eval() to test things that are related to syntax errors, though.)
3. The test must not crash any of Firefox 2, IE 7, Opera 9.25, and Safari 3.
4. The test must fail (throw an exception) in either a Firefox trunk build from January 2008 or a Webkit trunk build from January 2008 (or, ideally, both). (Opera and IE are failing plenty of tests already, I don’t want to add more tests that only fail in one of those. Of course if you find something that fails in Firefox or Webkit and Opera or IE, so much the better.)
5. The behaviour expected by the test must be justifiable using only standards that were in the Candidate Recommendation stage or better in 2004. This includes JavaScript (ECMAScript 3), many W3C specs, RFCs, etc.
6. You must be willing to put your test into the public domain. (I don’t want us to end up with any copyright problems later!)

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