I’m still having trouble believing it… Safari, the little browser from Cupertino that no one thought would go anywhere, has apparently passed the Acid2 test for browser web-standards compliance.

You can find the full story here, and the Digg comments here are humorous and a tad informative (especially if you’re too lazy to research on your own).

I really find this quite amazing. I know I wasn’t alone when I groaned as I heard Apple was releasing their own web browser. With Firefox just taking off and garnering support and publicity, the last thing we needed was yet another browser from someone as rumor-prone as Apple.

As with everything they do, however, Apple has surprised a lot of people by developing a totally standards-compliant browser before anyone else, even the mighty Microsoft (ha, rigghhttt) and those open source gods at the Mozilla Foundation.

I’ve read several reviews of the Acid2 test that were brought up when Firefox was being bashed for not passing the test yet. It was even mentioned on the Microsoft IE7 blog as being out of reach for IE7 (and with a good explination as to why).

Honestly, I’m quite excited that Safari is finally being released as an Acid2-compliant browser (since it actually passed the test in the Apple labs back in April). With any luck, this will encourage more people to try and make their browsers even more compliant (read: Firefox), although I wouldn’t hold my breath. Who knows, Microsoft may see this as a throw-down challenge from their rivals in So-Cal and decide that Acid2 is a major priority for IE7… If they were to do something like that (along with their planned tab-browsing and other features), I know I would certainly consider using IE again…

Any opinions here? Anyone else have unlikely predictions?