There is this test call the Acid3 Test, and it is designed to test a web browser’s compliance with web standards, with an emphasis placed on Document Object Model and JavaScript. For an operating system based on web standards, you might think that webOS would have been scoring fairly highly with the test from day one. Not so, it would seem. In the early days of webOS, the browser scored a pitiful 1/100. With the update to webOS 1.3.1, the browser scored a 73/100 – better, but still not great.

Now, with webOS 1.4 out and about, the browser’s standards compliance has taken another step forward, scoring a 92/100. Obviously, that’s a great step forward as far as the browser is concerned, and we have been receiving reports of better performance and rendering on all manner of sites as a result. The score also vaults the webOS browser (seriously, it needs a name) to the upper tier of mobile browser compliance, topped only by Mobile Safari (100/100), Opera Mini (98/100), Firefox on Maemo (94/100), and Android’s browser (93/100). Of note, Safari and Android are both powered by the same WebKit core that hums underneath the webOS browser (and webOS as an OS), so full standards compliance is a possibility. At the very least, the score is worlds better than before and far ahead of Internet Explorer (Mobile: 5/100, Desktop: 32/100). For 99.999999% of users a score of 92/100 is going to be more than good enough for their browsing experience.

jack87 in our forums also notes that several sites (like costco.com) that previously failed out on webOS are now working. How about you, seeing better rendering now that you’re all 1.4′d up?

EDIT: Anchors (links that lead to a specific point on a page, e.g. comments) work now too! This blogger = happy camper.

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Our sister site, The iPhone blog, recently posted about Google’s new Wave technology and how it worked wonderfully as a WebApp for the iPhone.  Having recently set up my Wave account, one of the first things I did was to see how well it worked through Palm’s own WebKit based browser, hoping that a mobile page would be delivered when I visited the site. The result?

Not good as evidenced by the "Memory critical, too many cards!" dialog in the screenshot to the right.  I was served the desktop version, and attempting to load the desktop version caused the Pre’s browser to grind to an absolute crawl, which is to be expected of any smartphone currently on the market.

I suspect that a page optimized for the Pre’s browser is coming down the pipe sooner than later, but for those who can’t wait to get their mobile Wave on, there’s a solution: the Pre’s browser (using webOS Quick Install from our homebrew section) can be patched to have it report itself as Mobile Safari to any web server, which means you get the very same mobile page that’s delivered to the iPhone delivered to the Pre.

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