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Buzz Archives: CSS

W3C Does CSS

With its newly redesigned home page, the W3C tossed any remaining table layouts out the window and committed completely to CSS for page layout. The new home page is in general written for newer, standards-compliant user agents in XHTML 1.0 strict. Check out the W3C's updated look.

By Molly E. Holzschlag | December 6th, 2002

Fun with CSS

In his new article, Box of Tricks, Joe Gillespie shows how to create multiple link styles, fashion buttons using borders, and create CSS rollovers. A great article, especially because it demonstrates to visual designers the emerging power of CSS over table-based, graphic-heavy designs.

By Molly E. Holzschlag | November 1st, 2002

All-CSS Site Repository

CSS boring? CSS too restrictive? No way. Look, here's a collection of nearly 800 table-free CSS designs, courtesy of Meryl who is thankfully mirroring the original archive from webnouveau.net, which has gone sadly AWOL. Admire, view source, learn.

By Scott Andrew LePera | October 28th, 2002

Wired Redesigns With CSS

Wired has redesigned with an all-CSS design that looks fantastic. No tables for layout. Due to a few glitches in the markup, the page falls short of full validity as XHTML 1.0 Transitional. Seeing as how most of those glitches seem to come from tag soup-spewing ad servers, we'll go ...

By Scott Andrew LePera | October 11th, 2002

CSS 2.1

As if XHTML 2.0, XHTML 1.0 2/e, and the prospect of tableless search portals was not enough for you, now there is a new version of the CSS 2 Recommendation for your perusal.

By Steven Champeon | August 6th, 2002

No tables for Lycos

Lycos Europe will be moving to a new design that validates as XHTML 1.0 Transitional and uses CSS for layout. (Netscape 4 users will get a plain text version with no formatting.) Spotted by Tom Gilder, reported in W3C’s public evangelist archives. Hat tip: Tantek Çelik.

By Jeffrey Zeldman | July 18th, 2002

New CSS Tutorial: Web Page Reconstruction with CSS

Although spilling into July a bit, Digital Web has one more tutorial for its June CSS theme. Web Page Reconstruction with CSS by Christopher Schmitt is one of the best CSS tutorials I've seen around for helping to understand the thinking and decision-making process behind markup. This is a terrific ...

By Shirley Kaiser | July 8th, 2002

Cutting Edge CSS

CSS guru Eric Meyer has added a new css/edge demo, Pure CSS Menus, to his experimental CSS site. Eric created this new CSS popout menu with standards in mind. Mozilla 1.0 and Netscape 7.0 support the CSS used for the popout menus so be sure to use one of those ...

By Shirley Kaiser | June 14th, 2002

Show us your CSS!

Tim Roberts of wiseguysonly.com is sponsoring a CSS competition in which one lucky winner will receive a domain name and 20MB of free PHP hosting for one year. The top 5 entries will be used as alternate switchable stylesheets for the site. Check out the contest entry rules and make ...

By Scott Andrew LePera | June 13th, 2002

CSS Promise vs. Reality: How Do They Compare?

Mark Newhouse addresses this question in his new article at Digital Web, Cascading Style Sheets, Promise vs. Reality, and a Look to the Future. Mark covers many important areas, including tables vs. CSS layouts, separating style and content, visual control, accessibility, leaner markup, forward compatibility, cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility, site ...

By Shirley Kaiser | June 5th, 2002

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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