Buzz Archives: Design
CSS Working Group feeds back to WaSP
Almost exactly a year ago, I asked all interested web professionals to let the CSS Working Group know what they want from CSS. Fantasai, an invited expert in the working group has published her feedback on our requests with information on what the Working Group has done about them. It's unclear ...
By Bruce Lawson | January 16th, 2009
- What do you want from CSS3 – one week left
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(Polish translation) As part of the outreach work we're doing in partnership with the W3C's CSS Working group, we invited all web professionals to tell the Working Group what they want from the next version of the spec. As the Working Group's face-to-face meeting is at the end of March, we will ...
By Bruce Lawson | March 2nd, 2008
- Tell the CSS WG what you want from CSS3
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The W3C's CSS Working Group charter expires on 1 July 2008, so the group will be discussing its revised charter in March this year. Fantasai, an Invited Expert in the group, has put out a call for web professionals to help the working group prioritise its work: The CSSWG plans to ...
By Bruce Lawson | January 18th, 2008
- Amazon allowing CSS customization
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In a fairly interesting move, Amazon is now allowing aStores to be customized using CSS.
By Aaron Gustafson | August 16th, 2007
- Detecting when good fonts change size
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Designing for the web is challenging enough, but when you need to take into account scaling font-sizes, it can quickly become a nightmare. The common wisdom is to design your pages to accomodate fonts two sizes up and two sizes down from the default, but with this new script from two clever Yahoo! blokes, your can get way more clever.
By Aaron Gustafson | September 12th, 2006
- Valid Flash, video, and audio embed (object) markup
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The following three links need to be in one place, once and for all: Valid Flash <object> markup: “Flash Satay” by Drew McLellan Valid video <object> markup: “Bye Bye Embed” by Elizabeth Castro Valid audio <object> markup (with Quicktime): “Object Embedding” by Simon Jessey, et. al. Here's the backstory: Eighteen months ago, I ...
By Ben Henick | August 15th, 2006
- An Open Letter to Disney Store UK
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Dear Disney Store UK, I would write this to you directly via your site feedback page but it is throwing Access database errors. The email appears to be down as well. So instead, I'm going to write my letter here in a public forum in the hopes that someone from your ...
By Molly E. Holzschlag | November 3rd, 2005
- WaSP Microsoft Task Force Update: Upcoming Products, XAML, Acid2, SXSW, and IE7 Revealed
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The WaSP Microsoft Task Force held another face-to-face meeting with available members on Tuesday. We met in a Starbucks along the waterfront in rainy Seattle. While the setting might have been a bit predictable, the conversation was unique and at times, very encouraging. WaSPs at the meeting were DL Byron ...
By Molly E. Holzschlag | November 2nd, 2005
- Calling all CSS-Savvy Designers
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Kevin Lawver, AOL's representative to the CSS Working Group, is making a plea to the design community to give the Working Group feedback on the CSS3 Borders and Backgrounds module. It isn't often one gets the opportunity to help define the tools you'll be using in your job, and this is ...
By Chris Kaminski | July 21st, 2005
- CSS Reboot 2005
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May 1st. To be remembered for... Elvis Presley and Pricilla's wedding anniversary? (1967) Last British concert by Beatles? (1966) The first Batman comic published? (1939) Well yes, but also for the first CSS Reboot 2005. CSS Reboot will attempt to bring together web professionals who design with CSS and standards in mind to launch their ...
By Andy Clarke | May 1st, 2005
- So long, Joe
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After over 8 years of publishing one of the top web design 'zines going, Joe Gillespie is hanging up his text editor. Along with sites by former WaSP project leader Jeffrey Zeldman, David Siegel and Lynda Weinman and books by the latter two, WPDFD was part of the canon of ...
By Chris Kaminski | December 3rd, 2004
- Keeping your Balance with ECMAScript
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Paul Bellows has revisited the even-height CSS columns question discussed in a couple of previous posts. Paul's method uses ECMAScript, the DOM and some non-standard properties to work it's magic. Personally, I'm not a big fan of using ECMAScript for basic layout. Neither is Paul, truth be told. But at the ...
By Chris Kaminski | September 13th, 2004
- W3C Rebranding
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Andrei Herasimchuk has posted an excellent logo design tutorial based on his efforts to redesign the W3C logo. Andrei undertook the exercise after Dean Jackson asked him to lend a hand with an upcoming W3C ten year anniversary event.
By Chris Kaminski | September 7th, 2004
- Sliding CSS Columns
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Eric Meyer and WaSP Douglas Bowman have teamed up to develop a technique for creating multiple columns of equal height and variable width using CSS. Eric's discussion also includes his thoughts on the expediency of the odd layout table, while Doug frames his explanation in a discussion of the advantages ...
By Chris Kaminski | September 7th, 2004
- A Guide to Small-Screen Web-Dev
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Read it, read it again. Save it. Print it. Highlight key points. (there are many) The End-All Guide to Small-Screen Web-Dev by Heidi Pollock (webmonkey, 5 Mar 2004)It takes one gigantabig tutorial to teach you how to build sites for all those itty, bitty devices.One of the better pieces (I have encountered) that ...
By Holly Marie Koltz | March 12th, 2004
- WYSIWYG CSS Editors Coming of Age?
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The good folks at westciv have released a new version of their style editor, Style Master 3.5. I took some time to work with it today and was rather impressed. There are some super cool features such as a browser support watcher, multiple ways of viewing and applying properties and ...
By Molly E. Holzschlag | March 4th, 2004
- CSS Vault
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Do you ever come to the point sometimes when you are designing and the design is just simply not working so you begin to wonder why you are even a designer or could even claim to be one? So speaks Paul Scrivens of 9rules. If you've ever felt the same (and ...
By Dunstan Orchard | November 14th, 2003
- Mobile Graphics Contest, W3C
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A Mobile Graphics with Standards contest is currently running at the World Wide Web Consortium. Announced September 30th, 2003 by the SVG working group at the World Wide Web Consortium(W3C) the SVG Mobile Competition is underway. There is still time to submit entries, though the deadline is November 3, 2003. The challenge: ...
By Holly Marie Koltz | October 14th, 2003
- ReUSEIT Contest
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ReUSEIT is a contest for designers and coders to create a redesign of Jakob Nielsen's useit.com that must use valid tableless XHTML 1.0, CSS, and it must meet WAI Accessibility level 1. JavaScript, GIF, JPG and PNG images may be used. Eric Meyer's quote says it all, "Design Eye for ...
By Meryl K. Evans | September 2nd, 2003
- Eric talks standards, Dave browses for bugs
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"The criticism that CSS websites have looked plain is really well deserved but the reason that CSS driven sites have looked plain to date is that the people who have created those sites have not been visual artists they haven't ...
By Ian Lloyd | July 7th, 2003
- W3C remixed
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The winners are in for the WThRemix contest. The challenge was to come up with a fancy new design for the W3C homepage using valid, accessible XHTML and CSS and eschewing tables.
By Anders Pearson | April 19th, 2003
- Fun with CSS
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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
- 37signals.com redesigns with XHTML and CSS
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37 Signals, a smart agency for accessible, usable, yet beautiful web design, has today launched a slight redesign of their company site with validating XHTML Transitional and CSS.
By Eric Costello | July 11th, 2002
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)
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