Working together for standards The Web Standards Project

Buzz Archives for April 2004

A Roadmap to Standards

Dave Shea: a man with too much time on his hands, or simply chock-full of genius? In either event, dash over to read A Roadmap to Standards. A veritable blognum opus, Dave's essay explains in practical, real-world terms the need for DOCTYPEs, validation, and structured markup — it's a must-read ...

By Ethan Marcotte | Filed in Web Standards (general)

WSG Interviews Eric Meyer

The Web Standards Group, known best for their evangelism of standards both online and in the sunny climes of Australia, have posted their Top Ten Questions for Eric Meyer. Eric discusses his new CSS books, along with his opinions on CSS3, where CSS has been, where it's going, and what its ...

By Drew McLellan | Filed in CSS

more freebies from westciv

In their ongoing efforts to spread the good word about markup and CSS, Westciv is offering FREE courses on HTML 4 and XHTML starting this week and running for the next several months. The free program is excellent for those brand new to standards, or for those folks using CSS but ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in HTML/XHTML

DRC? Yeah, You Know Me.

The Disability Rights Commission (DRC) released a formal accessibility review of one thousand UK websites today. Their findings paint a bleak picture: in their automated tests, 81% of the sites tested failed to reach the minimum standard for accessibility; additionally, 585 accessibility and usability problems were uncovered in user testing ...

By Ethan Marcotte | Filed in Accessibility

Safety First

We've all been there. You've got a blog. You've spent hours getting the templates and CSS just right. It even validates. You are the model of a cool, modern, standards aware weblogger. So you post a new entry to let the world know that you are now compliant. You even ...

By Anders Pearson | Filed in HTML/XHTML

W3C Recs the DOM3 Core

The Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Core Specification was released today by the W3C as a full-fledged Recommendation. This module provides the foundation for all the other modules in the DOM Level 3 architecture. Also today, the DOM Level 3 Load & Save module, which defines the interface for dynamically ...

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

New Zealand Hearts Standards

In a sweeping online initiative, the New Zealand government has set a 1 January 2006 deadline for all government websites to comply (article no longer available) with the national accessibility guidelines. The mandates were issued in the spirit of ensuring New Zealanders' right of access to government information and services ...

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

El Reg in CSS

The Register, the web's most vitriolic source of IT industry news, has made the leap to CSS and web standards - and they've done it with style. The new site validates as XHTML 1.0 Transitional and makes extensive use of CSS. While they still use a solitary table for their ...

By Simon Willison | Filed in Web Standards (general)

NN4.x Layouts

Still stuck supporting Netscape Navigator 4.x? Our deepest condolences. But all is not lost. Found recently: NN4-compatible XHTML/CSS 3 column layouts. (see also: CSS Layouts for Netscape 4) Complicated CSS-based layouts that actually work in NN4? The mind boggles, but there you go — it can be done!

By Dave Shea | Filed in CSS

The Way Forward With Web Standards

MACCAWS (Making A Commercial Case for Adopting Web Standards) have finally released their first white paper, The Way Forward with Web Standards. A document aimed at the technically minded, it presents an exhaustive business case for web standards while debunking common myths and misperceptions. And for the standards-naïve manager ...

By Ethan Marcotte | Filed in Web Standards (general)

W3C Link Checker Stands Alone

The W3C link checker has been upgraded, and a standalone version released. You can: Check your links online. Download the standalone link checker utility. Both the service and the standalone tool are free. As always, the W3C is openly soliciting your feedback and bug reports about its validation products and services.

By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Authoring Tools

W32ValidXHTML.A On The Loose

Antivirus software maker McAfee announced today that a new virus is making the rounds. The infection is spreading with ferocity among Web servers and desktop Windows systems alike, taking advantage of an obscure bug in the SMB file-sharing protocol that allows people named "Denis" to install software remotely without the ...

By Steven Champeon | Filed in April Fools

March for Web Standards

As we code, we must make the pledge that we shall always code for the future. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of web standards, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as our pages cannot avail themselves ...

By Ethan Marcotte | Filed in April Fools

Web Standards Perk Up More Than Your Site

Scientists from Johns Hopkins University in conjunction with the W3C today announced the results of a study showing a strong correlation between the use of non-standard, proprietary markup and erectile dysfunction in Web developers. According to the senior researcher Dr. Ella Mensa-Lechter, “Subjects who kept their structure clean noticed a ...

By Porter Glendinning | Filed in April Fools

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