Working together for standards The Web Standards Project

Buzz Archives for February 2004

The benefits of Web Standards to your visitors, your clients, and you

Presentation to the Web Standards Group, Macromedia User Group and Cold Fusion User Group at MXDU2004: Day Zero. [ Via wg ]

By Meryl K. Evans | Filed in Web Standards (general)

CSS Spec Updates

Word comes in from Tantek Çelik that the CSS Working Group has been busy. The past few days have seen the publication of the following goodies: CSS 2.1 Candidate Recommendation CSS Print Profile Candidate Recommendation CSS3 Hyperlink Presentation Module first working draft CSS ‘reader’ Media Type first working draft Of particular interest is the new ...

By Dave Shea | Filed in CSS

XForms Validation

The XForms Institute announced the launch of its new Web service, currently in beta: Free Online XForms Validation. The site also hosts interactive XForms tutorials and content from the O'Reilly book, XForms Essentials authored by Micah Dubinko. The online service validates XForms documents by URL, file upload and text area input ...

By Holly Marie Koltz | Filed in Authoring Tools, Validation, Web Standards (general)

IE Navigation Just Got Better

We've had the ability to add navigation options via the link element for accessibility purposes for some time now. But as with so much of what ails, user agent adoption has been slow in coming, especially for Internet Explorer. Users of Mozilla may already be familiar with the Site Navigation Bar, ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Accessibility, Browsers, Usability

XHTML Modularization Take Two

Over at the W3C the good folks of the HTML Working Group have released a working draft of Modularization of XHTML 1.0 - Second Edition for community review. Interesting items in the draft include implementation of abstract modules using XML schemas and a number of corrections based on three ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in HTML/XHTML

Passing Validation Muster

Whew. We passed the XHTML validation test that Keith randomly conducted. He makes a few good points about how hard it is to stay valid. When validating a page, you fix the errors encountered. Who is to say tomorrow it will validate when you slip in your blog entry or ...

By Meryl K. Evans | Filed in Validation

What is CC/PP and Why Should I Care?

CC/PP is not a new idea - it's been in development at the W3C for some time now. Yet, many web designers and developers are unaware of what it is, much less how it integrates with XML, XHTML and XSLT in an effort to improve device independence. The W3C ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in WaSP Asks the W3C

why you foxy browser, you

The Mozilla Foundation has released version 0.8 of Mozilla Firebird, but with a slick new name, “Firefox”. As the browser proceeds toward its much anticipated 1.0 version release, it continues to please many people with its clean lines, fast rendering, and of course - excellent commitment to web standards. Along with ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Browsers

Sweet as chocolate, impenetrable as a Swiss bank vault

A recent study of Swiss administration and corporate sites says that out of 68 sites, only eight are fully accessible. In their detailed study, based on the WCAG 1.0 Guidelines, they found the usual stumbling blocks: Complex table layouts don't linearize Javascript navigation doesn't work without Javascript Form elements must be clearly labeled Non-scalable text ...

By Matthias Gutfeldt | Filed in Accessibility

Accessible UK train timetable

Great Britain, while famous for many things, is perhaps best known for the efficiency and promptness with which it runs its rail systems. Each day millions of citizens are transported in comfort and style from the doorsteps of their homes, to offices, schools, shopping centres, and any number of other destinations. It's ...

By Dunstan Orchard | Filed in Accessibility

Two DOM3 Modules Reach Proposed Recommendation Status

On Thursday the W3C released the DOM Level 3 Core and Load & Save modules as Proposed Recommendations. This is the final stop on the path to being a full-fledged W3C Recommendation. Both modules will be open for implementation feedback until March 5.

By Porter Glendinning | Filed in DOM, W3C/Standards Documentation

Top businesses ignore accessibility

Businesses are missing a large audience by failing to make their Web sites accessible (news article no longer available). A Nomensa FTSE report finds that 79 percent of the Web sites did not provide alternate text for images, 56 percent did not have useful alternate text, and 77 percent did ...

By Meryl K. Evans | Filed in Accessibility

Validator, heal thyself?

A long-standing bug in the W3C's CSS validator is receiving some high-profile attention: Jeffrey Zeldman, fellow WaSP Douglas Bowman, and web design magazine A List Apart discuss the validator's seeming unwillingness to parse Tantek Çelik's Box Model Hack, a popular and long-standing trick used to hide CSS from less ...

By Ethan Marcotte | Filed in CSS

CSS: Beyond the Retrofit

Sure, you've heard the rumors. Heard the kids on the street talking about selectors, inheritance, and structured markup. Want to learn more, but not sure where to start? Well, have no fear — the inimitable Molly Holzschlag is here to help with CSS: Beyond the Retrofit. Taking us ...

By Ethan Marcotte | Filed in CSS

Orkut no friend to the blind

Anders Jacobsen points out that Orkut, the latest in a seemingly endless string of social networking clones, fails the most basic accessibility requirement: ALT attributes on images. Specifically, the images that you select to accept or reject someone as your friend. So-and-so added you as a friend. Is So-and-so your friend? [LINK] ...

By Mark Pilgrim | 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