Working together for standards The Web Standards Project

Buzz Archives for December 2004

Inaccessible sites creating ‘Net underclass?

UK IT rag The Register is running an article about the potential for inaccessble web sites to create a 'Net underclass'. The article is speaking primarily of UK-based sites, but the problem it discribes is hardly limited to a single nation. The article leans heavily on quotes from Deri Jones, CEO ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Accessibility

WDW2004 Sessions Online

Full streaming video feeds of some of most noteworthy sessions at this month's Web Design World 2004 have been published for your education and entertainment. Keynotes from Jeffrey Zeldman and Kelly Goto are joined by sessions on rich media web apps (Tom Green), defensive web design (37signal's Jason Fried), as well ...

By Drew McLellan | Filed in Training

CSS reference on your iPod

If you’re on the lookout for cool technical references that will draw the occasional puzzled glance at parties, then the folks at WestCiv have some great news for you. They’ve recently released their popular Complete CSS Guide in a format that can be installed on your iPod. If ...

By Ethan Marcotte | Filed in CSS

The perils of browser-specific code

Chad Dickerson, CTO of InfoWorld, calls developing IE-only web apps the 11th biggest IT mistake one can make: Many enterprises may not be able to avoid using IE. But if you make sure your key Web applications don't depend on IE-only functionality, you'll have an easier time switching to an alternative, ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Web Standards (general)

So long, Joe

After over 8 years of publishing one of the top web design 'zines going, Joe Gillespie is hanging up his text editor. Along with sites by former WaSP project leader Jeffrey Zeldman, David Siegel and Lynda Weinman and books by the latter two, WPDFD was part of the canon of ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Design

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