Buzz Archives for October 2005
We love to see you smile
Just ten days ago, Dean wrote here about Acid2: there has been no officially released browser that passes the test I'm thrilled to say that that's no longer the case — we have a winner! With today's release of Mac OS X 10.4.3, Apple's Safari RSS (version 2.0.2/416.12) is the first (publicly-released, ...
By Dori Smith | Filed in Acid2, Browsers
- moo.fx Makes it Easy to Add Transition Effects
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A small JavaScript library to add powerpoint or flash-like transition effects to web sites: moo.fx.
By Christian Heilmann | Filed in DOM, DOM Scripting TF
- Debugging JavaScript with jsTrace
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Aaron Gustafson gives us a very handy tool for debugging scripts: jsTrace.
By Jeremy Keith | Filed in Authoring Tools, DOM, DOM Scripting TF
- Spreading the Word
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With the release of his new DOM Scripting book, I’ve been on a little talking spree around the Web.
By Jeremy Keith | Filed in DOM, DOM Scripting TF
- Opera 9, Acid2 and Web Forms 2.0
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It seems the latest preview release of Opera comes pretty close to passing the Acid2 test. Apparently there is only one bug left to fix. After the initial announcement of the second acid test, a race began to become the first browser to pass it. Safari won by a streak and ...
By Dean Edwards | Filed in Browsers
- … And the Winner Is …
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We have a winner for the addEvent() recoding contest!
By Peter-Paul Koch | Filed in DOM, DOM Scripting TF
- IEBlog: Clean up your CSS hacks
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The IEBlog today issued a call to action, asking developers to help "clean up" CSS hacks that are failing in strict mode in IE7. Whether you're interested in helping the IE development team or not, consider this: a review of your code could help to clean out some bad CSS ...
By Kimberly Blessing | Filed in Browsers, CSS
- Web Essentials 05
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The Web Essentials 05 event has made available several audio and slide presentations of last week's keynote (by our own group leader Molly) and sessions at the WE05 PodCasts link. Links to other presentations may also be found listed at the program link. Session topics cover standards, ...
By Holly Marie Koltz | Filed in Web Standards (general)
The Web Standards Project is a grassroots coalition fighting for standards which ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all.
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 |