Working together for standards The Web Standards Project

Buzz Archives for February 2006

Kudos to Michigan State

Michigan State University launched a redesign of its Web site, yesterday. Designed and developed with best practices that follow Web Standards and Web Accessibiity, the university Web site looks good and validates to the XHTML strict doctype. The redesign involved the teamwork of the MSU Libraries, Computing, and ...

By Holly Marie Koltz | Filed in Education, Education TF, General

Quick Explanation of the Object Literal

Christian Heilmann explains the object literal JavaScript syntax.

By Christian Heilmann | Filed in DOM, DOM Scripting TF

NFB vs. Target in perspective

Since the National Federation of the Blind sued Target Corp. for the inaccessibility of its Web site, many people have taken sides, vilifying Target and/or lionizing NFB in turn. I think it's too early for that, if it's necessary at all. In terms of US law, this was a suit ...

By Matt May | Filed in Accessibility, Legal

Yahoo Releases its User Interface Library

Graded Browser Support, design patterns library, user interface library. Its been a busy day over at the Yahoo Developer Network.

By Jeremy Keith | Filed in Authoring Tools, DOM, DOM Scripting TF

Yahoo! Developers: Setting a Standard for the New Professionalism

In an article published Monday, February 13, 2006, Yahoo! Senior Web Developer Nate Koechley outlines the Yahoo! concept of Graded Browser Support. The approach is a work of art so beautiful and sensible it literally made me weep for joy. In light of ongoing discussion regarding a new professionalism for Web ...

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

Staying on Target

A lot can happen in 24 hours. In the time since yesterday's post, Taking Aim at Target(.com), the Target.com web site has been changed to address at least the image based submit buttons on the Target Pharmacy sign in page. It no longer requires a mouse click to submit the forms. They ...

By Derek Featherstone | Filed in Accessibility, Legal

Taking Aim at Target(.com)

With a name like Target, you would almost think they would have seen it coming, wouldn't you? The US National Federation of the Blind (NFB) has brought legal action against Target corporation (a major US-based discount retailer which operates more than 1,300 stores in 47 states) because their web site is ...

By Derek Featherstone | Filed in Accessibility, Legal

!important Fixed in Later IE7 Releases

It was brought to my attention today that the IE7 Beta 2 Preview wasn't honoring the role of the !important declaration and as such was causing alternative box model hacks to fail. !important is important for several important reasons. First is the very reason !important exists, which is to ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Browsers, Bugs, CSS, Microsoft

AJAX for Eclipse

IBM, Mozilla, Zimbra and Dojo announce a project to develop AJAX widgets for Eclipse.

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Authoring Tools, DOM Scripting TF

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