Google Chrome. Google’s web browser to be released later today. In comic form. By Scott McCloud. And here are some more screenshots for good measure.

The Web Standards Project has released the newest version of their Acid tests, “a line of tests designed to expose flaws in the implementation of mature Web standards in Web browsers.” Basically, there are 100 things a browser needs to do, and it gains a point for each thing it manages to do. It is not the end-all-be-all in how successful a browser is, but it does a striking job of illuminating just how terrible some browsers are.

Notably, every version of Internet Explorer does horrendously; nothing surprising considering IE 8 will be the first version to seriously adhere to web standards. However, most current browsers fail the test, but there are a number of shining beacons being built.

First and foremost is Safari, the default Mac browser. The current stable release doesn’t fair so well (39/100), but the current nightly (developer release) manages an astounding 90/100. It’s not perfect yet, but it is far beyond the 67/100 of Firefox 3 Beta 4 and 61/100 of Opera 9.5.

Safari is likely to stay ahead of the pack for awhile, as Firefox will never pass without major architectural changes and Opera is unlikely to pass until version 10 is released. But again, though Acid3 is the test for web standards compatibility, there is obviously much more to browsing than the simple rendering of the page. Speed and security are two entirely reasonable aspects for a browser maker to focus on over standards.

Take the Acid3 test yourself, and see how your browser inevitably crashes and burns.

I have been avoiding all the brouhaha over the new version of Internet Explorer, but I feel compelled to inform that Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 is now available. Download at your own risk, though; the comments alone are a cautionary tale of grave proportions. (Really, maybe this should have been IE 8 Alpha 1.)

What brouhaha? Version targeting. The new feature was announced over at A List Apart, and quickly stirred up a lot of ire among bloggers (Digital Web Magazine collects all or most of the reactions) and lemurs. The gist? Version targeting is lame.

My opinion is that (1) it seems too cumbersome to really work, and (2) who cares about Internet Explorer? Microsoft needs to scrap the whole browser department, and just package Opera or Firefox with Windows.