Working together for standards The Web Standards Project

Buzz Archives for February 2009

Translations, 翻译, traducciones, Terjemahan, Перевод

There are lots of great resources and blogs around the world in many languages that spread the word about web standards. Every once in a while however I see a new article in English and I think to myself "What a fantastic write-up, but I wish everyone could read it". ...

By Henny Swan | Filed in International Liaison Group, translations

WAI ARIA Last Call, and Safari 4

The W3C’s WAI ARIA moves to Last Call Working Draft; appropriately, the Safari 4 Beta is out, featuring improved ARIA support.

By Derek Featherstone | Filed in Accessibility, Browsers, Emerging Technology, W3C/Standards Documentation

Web Standards in Indonesia – a university web developer perspective

When in Indonesia Bruce Lawson, co-lead of the Accessibility Task Force, got the opportunity to interview Widianto Nugroho from Institut Teknologi Bandung. What follows is the transcript of their chat as well as links to useful resources for anyone interested in web standards in Indonesia. Take it away Bruce! I was ...

By Henny Swan | Filed in Accessibility, International Liaison Group, Web Standards (general)

Shared Passion

Something magical happens when you put a group of people that have a shared passion in the same room together. We're not just talking "excitement" here, either. We're talking passion -- the kind that keeps the fire in the belly burning; the kind that brings people together from far away ...

By Derek Featherstone | Filed in Accessibility, Curriculum, Education, Education TF, Training

Opera Web Standards Curriculum translations available

I'm always on the look out for translations of good resources into multiple languages so it's great to see the Opera Web Standards Curriculum starting to be translated into Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, Hungarian, Italian and Russian. The curriculum, which will work in parallel with the upcoming Web Standards Framework from WaSP, ...

By Henny Swan | Filed in International Liaison Group, 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)

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An End to Aging IE Installs	Aaron Gustafson
Beyond the Blue Beanie?	Stephanie (Sullivan) Rewis
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