I guess it depends on if you’re a glass half full or empty type of person. On one hand, IE8 definitely improved over IE7. On the other hand, it still fails. Hey, don’t look at Microsoft because they already told everyone to expect fail:

“Windows Internet Explorer 8 Expert Zone Chat (March 20, 2008)”. Retrieved on 2008-04-15. “The ACID3 test is a collection of interesting tests, spread across a large set of standards. Some of those standards will see improvements in IE8 - in fact, IE8 already improves on IE7’s score - but we are focused on the most important features and standards to make web developers’ lives easier. The ACID3 test does not map directly to that goal.” link

The good news is IE8 is going to make all your lives easier. TBH I can already feel the quality of my life rising as I type this post and I’m not even on IE8 at the moment. Don’t forget it’s only a beta, we can’t be too hard on them yet but don’t worry, the final version will be out soon enough and then it’s fair game

Here are the screens of the acid test:

IE7 Acid:

(major fail)

IE8 Acid:

(fail, not IE7 type failure, but still pretty damn bad)