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Buzz Archives: Browsers

Netscape 8 Beta goes live

Slashot notes that the Netscape 8 Beta has been released to the public. Ironically, though the release is said to focus on security and protecting user privacy it still uses Firefox 1.0 as its foundation, rather than the more-secure 1.0.1 release. As well, the new Netscape is only available for Microsoft ...

By Chris Kaminski | March 3rd, 2005

CSS Hacks – A Timely Reminder

With the news of IE7 somewhere on the horizon, there's something that all web developers should be aware of if - and it's a big if, I believe - Microsoft does take the opportunity of updating and fixing the CSS rendering problems with their browser. As Anne van Kesteren points ...

By Ian Lloyd | February 17th, 2005

Celebrating Serious Bandwidth

25 million downloads is a very respectable figure by anyone's standards, and standards are what we know and love here. That's the figure for Firefox downloads since version 1.0 was released 99 days ago, and Spreadfirefox is celebrating/commemorating the milestone with some very limited edition Firefox coins. Personally, I'm over the ...

By Ian Lloyd | February 16th, 2005

Standalone IE To Be Released This Summer

While details are still scant, Microsoft today announced that it will be releasing a standalone version of Internet Explorer this summer. This is a drastic reversal of Microsoft’s stated intention to cease developing IE as a standalone product—and one that will have standards advocates biting their fingernails with trepidation. ...

By Ethan Marcotte | February 15th, 2005

Hakon Gets Hot

Hakon gets hot and tells Bill Gates what's what about interoperability. The article, Opera to MS: Get real about interoperability, Mr Gates must be read by every web developer and standards geek. Now.

By Molly E. Holzschlag | February 11th, 2005

Netscape FirIE?

According to Slashdot, AOL has started beta testing their new Firefox-based version of Netscape, and it contains a little surprise: the new browser allows you to choose between Gecko and Trident, the rendering engines used in Firefox and IE, respectively. As usual, I'm ambivalent. The geek in me says 'cool'. The ...

By Chris Kaminski | November 30th, 2004

Web Breakage

A quick clarification on Molly's otherwise excellent post on Microsoft's fear of updating IE: Mr. Schare doesn't preclude improvements to IE's standards support altogether. Indeed, neither Molly nor Tristan say otherwise — though my slow brain did get that impression at first. The truth is, Mr. Schare says quite the ...

By Chris Kaminski | November 30th, 2004

breaking the web

Is Microsoft breaking the web by not updating the IE browser or planning better standards support in any yet-to-appear OS-based browser? In his article How Microsoft can support CSS2 without breaking the Web Tristan Nitot, who was with the Netscape Evangelism team before its demise, points to an interview in which ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | November 29th, 2004

Browsers, Browsers Everywhere

C|net has a full plate of browser news today, including confirmation of a new Firefox-based release of Netscape and the obligatory litany of IE security flaws (The Register has more). They've also got a speculative bit on the possibility that Microsoft may update IE via IE's add-on mechanism, and a ...

By Chris Kaminski | November 18th, 2004

It’s baaa-aack! (again)

BetaNews reports that AOL has re-started browser development and will be releasing a new version of Netscape based on Firefox. Users interested in participating in the beta program for he new Netscape can go here and, after entering your AOL/Netscape screen name (or getting one) sign on with registration code prototype1104.

By Chris Kaminski | November 17th, 2004

beautiful browser

Beautiful browser, wake unto me, Standards based web sites are waiting for thee; I struggle with rude browsers throughout the day, But lulled by your strength the others will pass away! Beautiful browser, Fox of my song, List while I woo thee with my code and my word; Gone shall be the woes of the IE-only ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | November 9th, 2004

Happy 10th Birthday, Netscape

Netscape is 10 years old, and C|net is celebrating with a special section on the once-mighty brand. Their retrospective on the browser itself is especially good. While you're there, you might also want to read what nice things Netscape founder Marc Andreeson had to say about Firefox's potential to challenge ...

By Chris Kaminski | October 13th, 2004

Google Investor: New Browser War Coming, Google to Sit It Out

C|net is reporting that Google board member and VC extraordinaire John Doerr said Google won't offer its own browser, contrary to recent speculation. Of course, Doerr also remarked that "that just because he was on the board of Google didn't necessarily mean he knew what they were doing." Doerr does, however, ...

By Chris Kaminski | October 7th, 2004

C|net Discovers Browser Incompatibilities

As part of a series on IE, C|net has an article on the problem of browser incompatibilities.

By Chris Kaminski | October 2nd, 2004

The Web as Platform

In my last post, I observed that the action on the web in the next few years would be its development as a platform for developing and deploying applications. In fact, the fun has already started.

By Chris Kaminski | October 1st, 2004

IE: Retired or Revitalized?

C|Net has an article about the future of Internet Explorer. Much of the article is speculation fueled by vague quotes from various Microsoft employees about how wonderful web browsing in Longhorn, the next version of Windows, will be. Wade through the fluff, though, and there's a pretty good history of the ...

By Chris Kaminski | September 30th, 2004

Min-Height Without the Min-Height

Fellow WaSP Dave Shea has cracked the nut of making min-height work in Safari. Ironically, he does it without using min-height. Well, almost: there's still a 'phantom' min-height in there to get Opera to do the right thing, but that's it. Nice work, Dave!

By Chris Kaminski | September 21st, 2004

Gbrowser?

The wags over at /. are speculating that Google may release a browser. Their evidence includes recent hires at Google and the fact that Google already owns the Gbrowser.com domain. Personally, I'd say this one lands somewhere between 'unlikely' and 'I'll have some of whatever you're smoking' on the bullometer, but ...

By Chris Kaminski | September 21st, 2004

The Communicatorization of IE

Remember the bad old days of 2000-2001? Back when Netscape Communicator still had appreciable market share on most sites? If you were working with CSS layouts then you probably don't; your brain has buried that period deep in your subonscious mind. It's just too painful a memory to deal with. ...

By Chris Kaminski | September 20th, 2004

Foxy Reaches Goal

Spread Firefox has reached its goal with five days to spare. Any guesses as to the number of downloads at the end of day 10? FirefoxIE has been updated to work with Firefox 1.0PR. See the release.

By Meryl K. Evans | September 19th, 2004

Down IE, Up Mozilla

Microsoft's Internet Explorer share has dropped from 95.6% in June to 93.7% this month. This is the most notable slip for IE's dominance in over seven years. Mozilla browser share has grown from 3.5% to 5.2%. The Spread Firefox campaign is on, with a promotion to encourage one million downloads in ten ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | September 17th, 2004

Get ‘em While They’re Hot

The Mozilla Foundation has released Firefox 1.0PR (that's 'Preview Release', or 0.10, one of the last releases before it goes 1.0), Thunderbird 0.8 and version 1.7.3 of the Mozilla Suite. Especially noteworthy in this release is rudimentary support for ATOM and RSS feeds. Neither RSS nor ATOM is a by-Hoyle web ...

By Chris Kaminski | September 15th, 2004

Patents and Tabbing and Browsers — Oh My!

A couple emailers have pointed out that Microsoft has apparently won a patent on tab navigation of links in a browser. Theoretically, this means Microsoft could demand royalties from any company or organization whose browser allows users to find and navigate through links on a web page using the 'tab' ...

By Chris Kaminski | September 15th, 2004

Safari Adds XSLT Support

Somehow I missed this for nearly a month, but Dave Hyatt has added XSLT support to Apple's KHTML-based Safari browser. Dave says he's working on an ECMAScript API for document transformations, and he's also asking for test cases using xml-stylesheet, as well as general feedback on XSLT support in general.

By Chris Kaminski | September 5th, 2004

IEBlog Picks up the Pace

After a sluggish spell — occasioned, no doubt, by the last-mile sprint to finish XP SP2 and recovery therefrom — IEBlog has started posting some gems. Of particular interest to web developers is a post explaingin IE for Windows XP SP2's updated user agent string. Also, be sure to catch Jeff Davis' ...

By Chris Kaminski | September 5th, 2004

Web Standards a Campaign Issue?

No, not really. But lefty überblogger Kos gets in a good rant about them anyway: Until browser developers learn to embrace web standards and allow for a uniform browsing experience, people like me will write code which will break on someone's browser, somewhere. Of course, Kos is still slogging along in <table> ...

By Chris Kaminski | August 26th, 2004

Browsehappy: Bad Grammar for a Good Cause

The Web Standards Project launched on Friday a new campaign dubbed Browse Happy. Despite Microsoft’s efforts to keep a competitive browser on the market, problems with Internet Explorer for Windows continue to mount. Meanwhile, Microsoft has announced that broad changes to Microsoft Internet Explorer for Windows will wait for ...

By Ben Henick | August 22nd, 2004

Netscape 7.2 Released

Via /.: The long-rumored update to the Netscape browser based on Mozilla 1.7, Netscape 7.2, was released today. Personally, I much prefer the lightweight, browser-only Firefox variant of Mozilla, or even Mozilla itself. Still and all, it's nice to see Netscape alive, if only for nostalgia reasons.

By Chris Kaminski | August 17th, 2004

Web Accessibility Toolbar for IE/Win

Chris Pederick's outstanding Web Developer Toolbar has long been a must-have tool for web developers & designers using Firefox and other Mozilla-based browsers. Now, webheads who're still using IE for Windows (yes, there really are some, and they deserve our pity ;-) have a comparable tool: the Web Accessibility Toolbar. Much ...

By Chris Kaminski | August 13th, 2004

IE for WinXP SP2 Explained

Over on IEBlog, group program manager Tony Chor is lifts the kimono on the changes made to Internet Explorer in Windows XP Service Pack 2. While the update isn't available for other Windows versions, and it doesn't offer any improvements to IE's standards support, the security enhancements made to IE in ...

By Chris Kaminski | August 13th, 2004

Moz gets XForms

Via /.: the Mozilla Foundation is teaming up with IBM and Novell to implement XForms on the Mozilla platform.

By Chris Kaminski | August 11th, 2004

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