Working together for standards The Web Standards Project

Buzz Archives for November 2003

OpenOffice.org 1.1, Standards via Writer2LaTex

For those using OpenOffice 1.1 software, Andreas Bovens has written: Converting OpenOffice.org documents to xhtml 1.0 strict with Writer2LaTeX: a quickguide. With a few changes to the OpenOffice software, Andreas clearly explains and shows how to modify the OpenOffice software to export XHTML Strict using Henrik Just's Writer2LaTeX utility. Also see: Comments ...

By Holly Marie Koltz | Filed in Authoring Tools

Web standards in ASP.NET

An ASP.NET developer claims that the next version of ASP.NET will produce standards-compliant XHTML, and include a built-in markup validator and accessibility checker as well.

By Mark Pilgrim | Filed in Accessibility

Vector Wiki Whiteboard

In the article, XML.com: Creating an SVG Wiki (November 19, 2003), author Danny Ayers shows how to make a whiteboard for Wiki using standards recommended SVG DOM. Danny gives the minimal code needed for the WikiWhiteboard which allows its users the ability to draw or scribble and use a button ...

By Holly Marie Koltz | Filed in Web Standards (general)

Dear Slashdot

We need to talk. Daniel M. Frommelt's “Retooling Slashdot with Web Standards” provides spot-on coverage regarding Slashdot's lack of standard fare. “Slashdot is a very prominent site, but underneath the hood you will find an old jalopy that could benefit from a web standards mechanic.” Even Joe Clark hopes Frommelt's article will ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Web Standards (general)

WaSP Interviews: Dan Cederholm

WaSP is pleased to introduce a new ongoing feature: WaSP Interviews. Taking a look at some of the groundbreaking new redesigns happening on the web, we intend to go behind the scenes and shed some light on why more and more big-name sites are turning to web standards. First on ...

By Dave Shea | Filed in WaSP Announcement

SprintPCS does CSS

With a crisp new look, SprintPCS has re-launched as yet another well-designed, corporate standards-based showcase. Hats off to France Rupert and the rest of the team for their hard work. You can view France's design notes on his personal site, Point Break. You might note that there are a few ...

By Dave Shea | Filed in Web Standards (general)

ReUSEIT Results

The ReUSEIT contest results are in. In the contest, folks were challenged to create usable, accessible, standards-based redesigns of usability pundit Jakob Nielsen's useit.com web site. Some of the designs are pretty cool, my personal favorite, Minimal Jakob, ranked in the top ten. I like this particular design mostly because ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Usability

I can’t help but wonder…

I can't help but wonder whether Jason would have better luck defending his position if he used standards-compliant markup (foxtrot comic of 2003.11.05 no longer available at http://www.ucomics.com/foxtrot/ ).

By Mark Pilgrim | Filed in Validation

CSS Vault

Do you ever come to the point sometimes when you are designing and the design is just simply not working so you begin to wonder why you are even a designer or could even claim to be one? So speaks Paul Scrivens of 9rules. If you've ever felt the same (and ...

By Dunstan Orchard | Filed in CSS, Design

On Saving Web Accessibility

Joe Clark writes in A List Apart that web accessibility is under threat from its own guidelines An upcoming revision to the Web Accessibility Guidelines is in danger of becoming unrealistically divorced from real-world web development, yielding guidelines that are at once too vague and too specific. Your expertise ...

By Ian Lloyd | Filed in Accessibility

Browser Targetting: Outdated

Locking users into a specific browser is soooo 1998. In an otherwise insightful new article by Jean Tillman of Unisys (the company that brought you the now-expired GIF patent, for those keeping notes), it's argued that those building web-based applications may wish to take advantage of browser-specific technology: Designers of Web-based applications, ...

By Dave Shea | Filed in Web Standards (general)

To Hack Or Not To Hack?

Now that is a question. Specifically, I'm referring to the use of CSS hacks, tricks that take advantage of known browser bugs to do such things as hiding troublesome CSS from specific browsers but not for others. Some markup purists believe them to be as evil as mal-formed XML or ...

By Ian Lloyd | Filed in CSS

Validity of Eolas Patent To Be Reexamined

Apparently (and thankfully) swayed by the W3C's impassioned appeal, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has agreed to reexamine the validity of the Eolas patent: “A substantial outcry from a widespread segment of the affected industry has essentially raised a question of patentability with respect to the 906 patent ...

By Ethan Marcotte | Filed in Browsers, Legal, Web Standards (general)

A Shopping Cart That Checks Out

No matter how hard we try, there will always be web sites that refuse to validate, don't want to play ball where it comes to accessibility and laugh in the face of table-free CSS layouts - and mostly these sites are the type that are generated dynamically (be that a ...

By Ian Lloyd | Filed in Accessibility, CSS, Web Standards (general)

More than one Internet Explorer

Fellow WaSP Ethan Marcotte has stumbled across a gem of a find — turning Microsoft's recent patent headache into an opportunity, a clever Chicagoan designer has discovered that the new 'patent-friendly' version of IE highlights a hole that allows the simultaneous install of IE5.01, IE5.5, and IE6.0 all on the ...

By Dave Shea | Filed in Browsers

Seeking Students

Paul Bohman of WebAim.org is seeking college and university students with disabilities. He will be researching and conducting a study about the use of Web in higher education. Paul will conduct interviews over the next few weeks via phone, email, online chat, or in person(he is located in Logan Utah, ...

By Holly Marie Koltz | Filed in Accessibility

Recent Buzz

Our Work Here is Done

By Aaron Gustafson | March 1st, 2013

Thanks to the hard work of countless WaSP members and supporters (like you), Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of the web as an open, accessible, and universal community is largely the reality.

When The Web Standards Project (WaSP) formed in 1998, the web was the battleground in an ever-escalating war between two browser makers—Netscape and Microsoft—who were each taking turns “advancing” HTML to the point of collapse. You see, in an effort to one-up each other, the two browsers introduced new elements and new ways of manipulating web documents; this escalated to the point where their respective 4.0 versions were largely incompatible.

Realizing that this fragmentation would inevitably drive up the cost of building websites and ran the risk of denying users access to content and services they needed, Glenn Davis, George Olsen, and Jeffrey Zeldman co-founded WaSP and rallied an amazing group of web designers and developers to help them push back. The WaSP’s primary goal was getting browser makers to support the standards set forth by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

In 2001, with the browser wars largely over, WaSP began to shift its focus. While some members continued to work with browser vendors on improving their standards support, others began working closely with software makers like Macromedia to improve the quality of code being authored in tools such as Dreamweaver. And others began the hard slog of educating web designers and developers about the importance of using web standards, culminating in the creation of WaSP InterAct, a web curriculum framework which is now overseen by the W3C.

Thanks to the hard work of countless WaSP members and supporters (like you), Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of the web as an open, accessible, and universal community is largely the reality. While there is still work to be done, the sting of the WaSP is no longer necessary. And so it is time for us to close down The Web Standards Project.

Many (if not all) of us are continuing to work in the world of web standards, but our work is now largely outside the umbrella of WaSP. If you are interested in continuing to work on web standards-related projects along with us, we humbly suggest you follow these projects:

• A List Apart – The magazine “for people who make websites” is run by WaSP founder Jeffrey Zeldman and is a consistent source of forward-thinking articles and tutorials.
• HTML5 Doctor – A solid resource and discussion forum on all things HTML5, brought to you by Bruce Lawson and his team.
• W3C Community Groups – If you have a passion for a specific web technology, you can help make it better by participating in one (or more) community groups. In particular, you might be interested in one of these: Core Mobile Web Platform, Responsive Images, Web Education, and Web Media Text Tracks.
• WebPlatform.org – A fantastic web standards resource, providing up-to-date documentation, Q&As, tutorials & more. Chris Mills, Doug Schepers, and a number of other standards advocates are involved in this project.
• Web Standards Sherpa – An educational resource founded by WaSP which continues to operate under the leadership of Chris Casciano, Virginia DeBolt, Aaron Gustafson, and Emily Lewis.
• Web Standards + Small Business – An outreach project started by WaSP that educates small businesses about why they should care about web standards. This project is overseen by Aaron Gustafson.

The job’s not over, but instead of being the work of a small activist group, it’s a job for tens of thousands of developers who care about ensuring that the web remains a free, open, interoperable, and accessible competitor to native apps and closed eco-systems. It’s your job now, and we look forward to working with you, and wish you much success.

Nota bene: In the near future, we will be making a permanent, static archive of webstandards.org and some of our other resources like WaSP Interact to preserve them as a resource and to provide a record of our 15-year mission to improve the web.
Bruce Lawson and Steph Troeth contributed to this post.

Filed in WaSP Announcement | Comments (89)

More Buzz articles

Title	Author
Call for action on Vendor Prefixes	Rachel Andrew
An End to Aging IE Installs	Aaron Gustafson
Beyond the Blue Beanie?	Stephanie (Sullivan) Rewis
The Sherpas are Here	Aaron Gustafson