I seem to remember an article awhile back where someone from Mozilla wrote that they didn't care to make up the last X% of the test because (if I recall correctly) they didn't agree with the interpretation of the standards that made up the tiny bit they were failing on. They felt they were keeping true to the actual spec and that the Acid was incorrect and thus it was silly to conform just to get that 100/100. I may be mistaken but perhaps the Acid test has now come into line with whatever spec items they were disputing. IF this is the case then my kudos to the Mozilla team for not "conforming" just to conform.

Edit: found the link: http://limi.net/articles/firefox-acid3/ So it was not wanting to put in partial implementations when a final spec wasn't complete yet just to pass a test.

Edit again: Even Firefox 3.6 now scores a 99/100

This is great and all for Mozilla, but the team at MS working on IE didn't have this luxury. If they took a plublic stance against an aspect of the test (even if completely legitimate) they would be ridiculed by the tech press.

It is not a luxury, it is a benefit of the credibility Mozilla has worked hard over many years to build.

Not only did they have the luxury, they took advantage of it. See http://news.softpedia.com/news/IE9-Platform-Preview-3-Scores... or http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/benchmarks/acid3/default.h...

In a sense they were ahead of the game: they took a principled stance not to partially implement standards they considered unnecessary, just to score extra points on Acid3.

The change to the test is (to some degree) an acknowledgement that they were right on this.

But what about the users and the creators of the web? What if they would feel that these standards would be necessary? Whenever one of the other, large companies takes this stance on a standard - Apple, Microsoft, whathaveyou - people begin complaining, but for some reason, this time, as well as several other times when it has involved Mozilla and their frowning upon certain standards (MPEG-4 AVC f.e.) it's all thumbs up and smiles. What's your take on this?

People don't thumbs up and smile at all. Have you not seen all the complaints on Reddit and Slashdot about Firefox lagging behind on ACID3 compliance?

Not only on ACID3 - any discussion about HTML5 video has plenty of criticism to Mozilla.

Not everything is subjective. I find Mozilla's arguments here convincing, so I give a thumbs up and a smile. :)

Not all reasons for rejecting a standard are equal.

Uh... IE9 failed the SVG fonts parts of the test just like Gecko did, and for similar reasons.