Working together for standards The Web Standards Project

Buzz Archives for October 2004

What is a “web standard?”

The grand irony as we debate the importance of validation and what web standards are is this little bugaboo: Web "standards" aren't. The W3C provides specifications and recommendations which have been coined by practitioners as "standards" when they are not precisely standards, but de facto standards. ISO, for ...

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

Committed to Sincere Progress, Not Perfection

Last week a standards friendly redesign of the ABCNews site was announced, only to be met with criticism on the homepage of the Web Standards Project site. An obvious conflict emerges from what we see in the redesigned site under discussion, and in the point of the argument made ...

By WaSP Member | Filed in Opinion

In Search of Validation…

Last week was great for chatter — not just about history or U.S. politics, though there was plenty of chatter about those things as well. Yes, folks, it’s official: validation is a must-have, as explained with a few friendly caveats in the latest Web Standards Project Opinion. In summary, it appears ...

By Ben Henick | Filed in Web Standards (general)

Happy 10th Birthday, Netscape

Netscape is 10 years old, and C|net is celebrating with a special section on the once-mighty brand. Their retrospective on the browser itself is especially good. While you're there, you might also want to read what nice things Netscape founder Marc Andreeson had to say about Firefox's potential to challenge ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Browsers

All That Glitters

Mike Davidson, art director behind the now-legendary ESPN.com CSS redesign, announces the redesign of ABC News, touting it as a success of real-world web standards. While the site’s new design successfully incorporates Flash, JavaScript, and CSS into an appealing, well-reasoned layout, I’m not exactly sure what real-world web standards means. ...

By Ethan Marcotte | Filed in CSS, Validation

Penn State Group

To address a challenge, How to help others understand and use web standards, individuals at Pennsylvania State University have formed the Penn State Web Standards Users Group. Group membership includes people from various colleges within the university who meet monthly on campus to discuss topics and issues, share knowledge, and ...

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

ASP.Net & Standards Part II

Wow. My post on ASP.Net and standards seems to have touched a nerve. I received a pile of feedback via email on that one, and with a currently crazed work schedule it's taken me until now to sort through all the good info provided. The upshot: yep, ASP.Net's built-in functions are ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Web Standards (general)

Google Investor: New Browser War Coming, Google to Sit It Out

C|net is reporting that Google board member and VC extraordinaire John Doerr said Google won't offer its own browser, contrary to recent speculation. Of course, Doerr also remarked that "that just because he was on the board of Google didn't necessarily mean he knew what they were doing." Doerr does, however, ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Browsers

It’s a standard world, after all

Andy Clarke just announced the standards-based redesign of Disney Store UK — and yes, folks, the new site even validates right out of the gate. The site's yet another compelling argument for how easily it is to build a high level of standards compliance and accessibility into a well-established brand. ...

By Ethan Marcotte | Filed in CSS, HTML/XHTML, Web Standards (general)

Zen of CSS

WaSP Molly Holzschlag has posted an announcement for her new book, co-authored by fellow WaSP Dave Shea. Just what I need — one more reason to blow my milk money on books. Thanks a lot, Molly. ;-) Update: Dave Shea has added a very complete previewing the book.

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in CSS

Standard Slideshow System

Eric Meyer has released a second beta of his web standards-based slideshow system. I haven't mucked about with it yet, but having developed a couple of slideshows myself I'm cognizant of the issues involved. This promises to be a valuable, lightweight alternative to the omnipresent PowerPoint slideshows we all know and ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Web Standards (general)

Standards Frustration of an ASP.Net Newbie

As I mentioned in my previous post, my employer has adopted Microsoft's ASP.Net as their server-side technology of choice. For the most part, this decision has only tangential impact on me: I spend most of my time on client-side development, project management, IA and the odd incursion into the worlds ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Web Standards (general)

C|net Discovers Browser Incompatibilities

As part of a series on IE, C|net has an article on the problem of browser incompatibilities.

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Browsers, Web Standards (general)

The Web as Platform

In my last post, I observed that the action on the web in the next few years would be its development as a platform for developing and deploying applications. In fact, the fun has already started.

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Browsers, Web Standards (general)

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)

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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