Working together for standards The Web Standards Project

Buzz Archives for June 2005

One blog leaves, another arrives

A few weeks ago, Apple announced that it was making WebKit, WebCore, and JavaScriptCore open source (and got contributions within the first few hours!). Correspondingly, Dave Hyatt's blog, Surfin' Safari, has now moved from here to here. What's cool is that the whole Safari dev team is joining in, so it's ...

By Dori Smith | Filed in Browsers

Acessibility, Validity, Guidelines and Law

In the wake of the @media 2005 Conference and the WCAG Working Group face-to-face in Brussels, accessibility has been getting a lot of attention. Lots of people have been asking good questions. Fewer have been providing good answers, but at least we're getting healthy, broad-based discussion of the issues. Case in ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Accessibility

WaSP ATF: Already A Smoking Gun?

It's not even two days since WaSP announced the formation of the Accessibility Task Force, quickly coined the “ATF” by several folks despite a more sobering U.S. federal agency that goes by the same initialism (or would that be acronym?). While clearly a long time coming, the immediacy and ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Accessibility TF, General

WaSP Accessibility Task Force

I am very pleased to be able to publicly announce the formation of the WaSP Accessibility Task Force. Bringing together accessibility specialists from across the world, the Accessibility Task Force will work with accessibility organizations, technology vendors and others to help promote Web accessibility. The Task Force members include several WaSPs and ...

By Andy Clarke | Filed in Accessibility TF, WaSP Announcement

Latest WaSPs

It's with great pleasure that I can announce that two people who I respect the most have agreed to lend their talents to WaSP. Please put your hands together for Derek Featherstone, one of the most articulate and committed accessibility advocates and for fellow BritPacker Jeremy (bringing DOM scripting to the ...

By Andy Clarke | Filed in WaSP Announcement

Opera to Use acid2 Beyond the Desktop

Opera Software plans to use the acid2 test not only to improve implementation and correct bugs within the desktop browser, but then do so for its mobile browsers, too. Jon S. von Tetzchner, co-founder and CEO of Opera Software, writes: “When our rendering engine gets it right, you can expect to see ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Acid2, Browsers

iCab, Konqueror pass Acid2

In a dramatic upset, perennial Mac browser also-ran iCab has edged out Linux browsing heavyweight Konqueror for second place in the Acid2 stakes. Despite some recent controversy, Konqueror developers were able to use about half of Safari driver Dave Hyatt's Acid2 efforts to boostrap their own successful Acid2 campaign. Some great work ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Acid2, Browsers

Hiram College Conversion

A college website, multiple authors, and web standards — how can it be done? The WaSP Education Task Force asked Jonathan Linczak, webmaster and project lead, about the conversion of Hiram College to a standards-compliant website. Jon had been reading about and using standards on sites he had developed before he ...

By Holly Marie Koltz | Filed in Education, Education TF, WaSP Announcement, Web Standards (general)

BrowseHappy Now Part of WordPress as WaSP Refocuses Mission

In an effort to refocus energy on advocating for standards from a perspective of universal access and vendor neutrality, WaSP is handing over the reigns of the BrowseHappy campaign to the good folks at WordPress. The move comes after WaSP members examined past and present activities and decided that while the ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Browsers

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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