Working together for standards The Web Standards Project

Buzz Archives for September 2005

Build Your Own Standards Compliant Website Using Dreamweaver 8

If you're working with the new version of Dreamweaver, you may be interested in a new book from SitePoint aimed at those who wish to build standards compliant sites. Written by WaSP member Rachel Andrew of the Dreamweaver Task Force, and tech edited by Group Leader Molly E. Holzschlag, Build Your ...

By Drew McLellan | Filed in Adobe TF, Training

Got Browser Woes? Think Again.

If you've been losing hair due to browser incompatibilities on the desktop, blame your remaining gray hairs on IE 6.0, Safari or Opera bugs and implementation problems, and have felt the calcium leeching from your tired bones while trying to make standards-based sites compatible in older browsers, you may wish ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Browsers, Emerging Technology, HTML/XHTML, Mobile

Developer Toolbar for IE

As mentioned in a previous post, Microsoft have been at work on a web developer toolbar similar to the one available for Firefox. The toolbar has now been made fully available and can be used on IE6 and IE7. I often find myself trying to resolve issues in IE but ...

By Ian Lloyd | Filed in Browsers

Validation, meet Unit Testing. Unit Testing, meet Validation.

Are you "test infected"? Do you work on dynamic sites and wish there was an automated way to run the output through the W3C validator? Do you wish it was integrated nicely with your unit testing framework? Scott Raymond has come up with a nice bit of code to add automated ...

By Anders Pearson | Filed in Validation

MSIE7 Will Not Support application/xml+xhtml MIME Type

Announced a few days ago on the IEBlog: Why aren’t we supporting XHTML when it’s served as the “application/xml+xhtml” media type in IE7? I made the decision to not try to support the MIME type in IE7 simply because I personally want XHTML to be successful in the long run. Obviously this ...

By Dean Edwards | Filed in Browsers

Opera is Free.

While upgrading my Opera Browser to 8.5 today, then vising the community page, I noticed today's Opera news item Opera is Free!. No more ads, better browsing, no more banners. Free. From the Opera Why Free? page: Opera has removed the banners, found within our browser, and the licensing fee. Opera's ...

By Holly Marie Koltz | Filed in Browsers

XML Nanny: Validation Tool

For those who design and develop their sites on a Mac, Todd Ditchendorf has developed a handy tool to help validate XML and XHTML documents from the comfort of your own desktop. XML Nanny cares for your XHTML documents in places the W3C web-based validation service can't reach... Suppose you are ...

By Drew McLellan | Filed in Authoring Tools

No Mr. Ballmer, Microsoft Will not Win the Web

Reading through an article about Microsoft in Business Week, I was not shocked but oh so enraged by this bit from an interview with CEO Steve Ballmer: “We won the desktop. We won the server. We will win the Web. We will move fast, we will get there. We will win ...

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

Multi-National Team to Focus on Accessibility Tools

A new consortium launches today and is announced at Juicy Studio with the entry Web Accessibility Tool Consortium (WAT-C), authored by Steven Faulkner, who is a co-founder of WAT-C. Gez Lemon of Juicy Studio is also a member of the WaSP Accessibility Task Force. The goals of the group include ...

By Holly Marie Koltz | Filed in Accessibility

News From the IE Development Team

I can't believe how useful and informative the IE blog has been since its launch. Once the topic of rumour, guesswork and conjecture, what's happening with IE is more open than I could ever have imagined. There is some more news about IE that I wanted to pick through here ...

By Ian Lloyd | Filed in Browsers

Web Developer Toolbar – Update

For all those people who have been itching to try out/update Firefox to the new 1.5 beta but were put off because it won't work with the Web Developer Toolbar, there's good news - Chris Pederick has done a minor update to make it compatible with the new browser. Form ...

By Ian Lloyd | Filed in Browsers

European Parliament: Nil Point

BBC News reports on the launch of a new site for the European Parliament. With the intention of putting a 'friendlier face' to a parliamentary body who has historically felt very distant to most, if not all, European citizens, you would have thought that only good things can come from ...

By Drew McLellan | Filed in Web Standards (general)

Web Standards Are Your Responsibility

In his recent article Web Standards Are Your Responsibility, Keith Robinson makes a convincing argument for sticking to your standards-guns against all odds. I know, probably better than many, how much of a challenge Web standards can be to implement on a day-to-day basis. I've expressed my angst towards standards and ...

By Drew McLellan | Filed in Web Standards (general)

WaSP Welcomes Sweden

The WaSP Education Task Force welcomes Lars Gunther as our liaison to Sweden. Lars is working with Skolverket (Swedish Language), Sweden's national agency for schools, to encourage the adoption of Web standards in their curriculum reform project for Gymnasium (Swedish Language) scheduled for launch in 2007. Gymnasium is similar to ...

By Holly Marie Koltz | Filed in Education, Education TF

addEvent() Recoding Contest

Here's one for lovers of the language of the rhinos:- over on the WaSP DOM Scripting Task Force blog, PPK announces the launch of a JavaScript addEvent() recoding contest. Write your own version of addEvent() and removeEvent(), submit it by adding a comment to this page, and win JavaScript fame. Entries will ...

By Drew McLellan | Filed in DOM, DOM Scripting TF

Attention All Developers …

There's a new browser in town. Well, there's a beta update in town - Firefox 1.5 is available as a beta, and the people at Mozilla are asking developers to go give it a whirl. Try it out, see what breaks. If you're an extension developer (Cough! Cough! Chris Pederick!) ...

By Ian Lloyd | Filed in Browsers

addEvent() Recoding Contest

Launching an addEvent() recoding contest.

By Peter-Paul Koch | Filed in DOM, DOM Scripting TF

Searching for Standards

I did a small comparative analysis of markup practices at several major search engines. It's interesting to note that only one engine is using valid markup and CSS layouts, and that would be MSN. Close behind is AOL, whose validation problems are mostly related to ampersands not being escaped, and ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in HTML/XHTML, Validation, Web Standards (general)

Disaster Aid for Windows users only?

At Boing Boing yesterday: FEMA to Mac, Linux users: drop dead. Bottom line: if you're not using Windows + IE, it appears that you won't be able to file a disaster assistance claim on Fema.gov. A Javascript enabled browser is another requirement. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) offers ...

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

Slashdot Goes CSS: Help Beta Test

After 8 years. That's EIGHT years, the infamous Slashdot is finally working with CSS. They are asking folks to look at their CSS and report bugs. And don't blame me if you can't connect. We're talking Slashdot after all.

By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in CSS

Welcome an Event Apart

Zeldman and Meyer are two names that will always pack a punch when it comes to being shapers of the Web, particularly when it comes to standards. Now, they've teamed up for the long-awaited, content-rich Event Apart. Having worked side by side with Eric for many years, I know how much ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Education, Training

Harnessing the Power of User Groups

Web sites in a university environment are, more often than not, micro-managed within individual faculties, colleges and administrative units. It stands to reason; each department is often responsible for their own content. However, it is a common problem that resources are not evenly spread across the different areas of an academic ...

By Steph Troeth | Filed in Education, Education TF

Helping Hands for Displaced Designers

Designer Matthew Richmond of the fantabulous Chopping Block is someone I regard highly not just because of his creative skill, but because he's a designer who does beautiful Flash work and cares deeply about Web standards, too. Matthew sent out an email to friends and colleagues about a site ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Outreach

Best Practices for Declaring Languages in HTML and XHTML

There's a lot of misinformation about how, when and where to declare a language - or multiple languages - within HTML and XHTML documents. Fortunately, the GEO group at the W3C provides us with details as to how to do this. Here are some guidelines to help: Always declare the default ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Internationalization

Unobtrusive Behaviour Layer

Steve Chipman presentation (audio and slides) covers all of the important aspects of modern-day JavaScript in a clear informative way.

By Jeremy Keith | Filed in DOM, DOM Scripting TF

IE7 CSS Improvements

Over at the IEblog, Justin Rogers details further improvements to CSS 2.1 parsing in IE7 - particularly when operating in strict mode. On the list is improvements to pseudo-element selectors (like :first-letter), multi-class selectors, and root-node selection. It's all pretty heavy CSS geekery, but it's important CSS geekery, and is as ever ...

By Drew McLellan | Filed in Browsers

Inspiration for Tables

Do you ever find yourself longing for inspiration where it comes to designing tables? Finding examples of good CSS-based tables is not easy - inevitably you'll have to post to a discussion list and see what people recommend. Now, finding inspiration should be a little easier with the CSS Table ...

By Ian Lloyd | Filed in CSS

Microsoft Dropping Support for XHTML1.1

Or at least they're dropping support for it in ASP.Net 2.0. Is this a bad thing? The initial reaction might be one of shock and indignation, that it is a step backwards. Another response might be to accept that it's a realistic decision to make and one that actually helps ...

By Ian Lloyd | Filed in Authoring Tools, Browsers, HTML/XHTML, 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