Buzz Archives for December 2003
SimpleQuiz
It's often hard to know what the most appropriate markup is for any given job. Should that small bit of text be wrapped in a <span> or an <h3>? When do you use <ul> and when do you use <dl>? And is there ever a time when it's appropriate to ...
By Dave Shea | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- Benefits of XHTML Modularization
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Just what is this magic word beginning with 'M' that spans six syllables? What does it mean, and what implications does it have for us? In this issue of “WaSP asks the W3C”, we learn some of the benefits of XHTML Modularization.
By Steph Troeth | Filed in HTML/XHTML, WaSP Asks the W3C
- Best Practices in Web Page Development
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The Apple Developer Connection has published an article on best practices in creating Web pages: Safari complies with standards, but not all browsers do, so you may need to adjust your site to look right to all readers. Learn how to design, modify and validate your website so that it can ...
By Steph Troeth | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- Web Standards for Business
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In his article “Web Standards for Business”, François Nonnenmacher talks about how the separation of content and presentation falls in line with enforcing corporate brand and image through style guides, and how employing Web standards can benefit a company's Web development process and technical support infrastructure.
By Steph Troeth | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- Microsoft’s Patent Tricks
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More patent news to report. On Tuesday, Microsoft was granted a patent on the “method and apparatus for writing a Windows application in HTML.” Though Microsoft is quoted in the article as “having no plans to enforce it,” one is forced to wonder how this will extend to the recently-uncovered XAML, ...
- Kamus yang memang istimewa
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Jikalau kau memerlukan sesuatu perkataan dalam Bahasa Hindu, Bahasa Swahili, Bahasa Cina, ataupun Bahasa Inuit, kunjungilah laman Web ini. C'est une collection de dictionnaires multilingues. If you need a word in Hindi, Swahili, Chinese or Inuit, visit this Web site, a collection of multilingual dictionaries. Best of all, it's all valid ...
By Steph Troeth | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- #ericmeyer:first-child
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Most WaSP readers are very familiar with WaSP's good friend Eric Meyer, who has helped the world learn Cascading Style Sheets. Well today, WaSP would like to publicly celebrate the birth and homecoming of Carolyn Maxwell Meyer, first child to Eric and Kat. By all reports she is very ...
By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in WaSP Announcement
- WaSP Interviews: Todd Dominey
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WaSP Interviews continues today with a look behind the scenes at PGA.com. Todd Dominey of Dominey Design talks about the heartache of an outdated Content Management System, integrating ugly advertising code with a standards-based site, and the finer points of CSS vs. Flash-based navigation. Read the interview.
By Dave Shea | Filed in WaSP Announcement
- Writing Efficient CSS
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Worried about keeping your CSS lean and mean? Well, toss your style sheets on the treadmill and check out Writing Efficient CSS, authored by the style gurus behind Position Is Everything. Through the intelligent use of shorthand properties, style inheritance, and a host of other handy tips, you'll learn ...
By Ethan Marcotte | Filed in CSS
- Browser Testing
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Of course, it's always important to test standards-based work amongst the myriad browsers on the market today. A standard can only be a standard if the software supports it. While we're getting closer, we're not at the point yet where we can build our code and rely on every browser ...
- Bo, Selectors
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From the people who brought you the Listamatic, Listutorial and Floatutorial comes a new CSS tutorial called Selectutorial. In this new tutorial, Russ Weaklyorial explains the mysteryorials of CSS selectors and how you can go beyond the simple type selectors to take advantageorial of inheritance, pseudo classes and how to ...
- Good Gawds
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With the inexcusably cheesy heading taken care of, I can move along to tell you that the Guild of Accessible Web Designers (GAWDS for short) is now open for business. The guild is seeking as many enthusiastic, members as possible during the 'soft launch' (with the official launch date early ...
By Ian Lloyd | Filed in Accessibility
The Web Standards Project is a grassroots coalition fighting for standards which ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all.
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 |