Working together for standards The Web Standards Project

Buzz Archives for March 2005

Interview with Håkon Wium Lie

Håkon Wium Lie is the CTO of Opera Software and in 1994 proposed the idea of CSS. Håkon is as deeply involved with the Web and with CSS as anyone can possibly be. Recently, he contacted WaSP to ask whether we could host the Acid2 test, which we agreed to ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Browsers, CSS, DOM

Inspired by Accessibility.

Accessibility and usability inspires innovation. Embracing and using standards and recommendations allows for more innovation. It's time to quit thinking that embracing accessibility stifles growth or causes limitations. Many years ago, I was inspired by accessibility and innovations. I began my work and advocacy of web standards and accessibility items well ...

By Holly Marie Koltz | Filed in Accessibility, Usability

What’s Up with WaSP

Maybe we built a hive in your garage, or perhaps we stung you in an unsightly spot. We are truly sorry. We really had promised to be a kinder and gentler sort of WaSP. But then again some of my country's presidents promised the same thing. So let me wake up ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in WaSP Announcement

Access Matters Quiz Blog

Bob Easton is the man behind Access Matters, a weblog that offers up advice regarding web accessibility and best practises. Quiz items are presented as blog or journal entries and answers by others follow in the comments or replies often offering up additional key information. Thanks go to Gez Lemon of ...

By Holly Marie Koltz | Filed in Accessibility

The Acid2 Challenge

In a public effort to encourage Microsoft to add as much CSS 2 support as possible as its developers embark on IE7, Håkon Wium Lie (CTO of Opera Software and the father of CSS) and the Web Standards Project have begun the development of a test suite, known as "Acid2." The ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Acid2, Browsers

IE 7 Rumors

Microsoft Watch has posted an article with rumored details on IE7. That the release will primarily be focused on security, and will include tabbed browsing come as no surprise. They say native (i.e., no Direct-X filters required) support for alpha transparency in PNG is also in the cards. The advance ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Browsers

Welcome, Tantek

The WaSP would like to officially welcome Tantek Çelik to its Steering Committee (pssst, someone update the bio page thanks for the quick work, Ben). I was wondering why I was reading about it here and here but not on this site, and then I realized that it's probably because ...

By Dori Smith | Filed in General

MS Commits to Better Standards Support in IE 7

Lead program manager for IE Chris Wilson has committed to improving standards support in Internet Explorer 7. While Chris doesn't provide many details about what improvements will be made just yet, he does say that IE's rendering in 'quirks mode' won't see any changes that might 'break' legacy sites. He expressly ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Browsers

Handheld Styling

Jim Wilkinson authored a CSS Wiki page of useful information for those interested in styling content for the small screen, found at: Handheld Stylesheets - css discuss. If you are developing or styling content for handheld or mobile devices this page looks like it would be a very useful bookmark. Jim ...

By Holly Marie Koltz | Filed in CSS, Mobile

All About Firefox

Perhaps this is something that should be added to BrowseHappy, but for now I wanted to draw your collective attention to a page I stumbled upon this morning. It's on one of my favorite web sites, How Stuff Works, and this time Firefox gets the treatment. The chances are, you're ...

By Ian Lloyd | Filed in Browsers

Netscape 8 Beta goes live

Slashot notes that the Netscape 8 Beta has been released to the public. Ironically, though the release is said to focus on security and protecting user privacy it still uses Firefox 1.0 as its foundation, rather than the more-secure 1.0.1 release. As well, the new Netscape is only available for Microsoft ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Browsers

Because the web is only one facet of the Internet

Those of you who don't check Slashdot might be interested in something posted there several minutes ago: A Concise Guide to the Major Internet Bodies. In addition to our favorite, the World Wide Web Consortium, other organizations focused on infrastructure and policy, such as the Internet Engineering Task Force and ...

By Ben Henick | Filed in 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)

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