Working together for standards The Web Standards Project

Buzz Archives: General

Call for action on Vendor Prefixes

When I first became involved with The Web Standards Project I was, like most of my peers, either building two completely different sites to support the version 4 behemoths - Internet Explorer and Netscape, or making a decision as to which browser people should use to view the site. Internet Explorer ...

By Rachel Andrew | February 9th, 2012

The Sherpas are Here

After many months of hard work, we’re excited to announce the launch of Web Standards Sherpa.

By Aaron Gustafson | March 13th, 2011

HTML5 logo: W3C takes a step in the right direction

With a little back-pedalling, the W3C has moved away from their blanket characterization of modern web tech as “HTML5”.

By Chris Mills | January 28th, 2011

InterAct translations and localizations

Work is well and truly underway to get WaSP InterAct translated into multiple languages. With an army of over thirty volunteers working in eighteen languages we hope to get localized versions of the Curriculum into schools colleges and universities near you soon.

By Henny Swan | May 11th, 2009

UK government browser guidelines: good sense prevails

You might remember that I published a post called UK government draft browser guidance is daft browser guidance last September, calling out a draft document outlining some UK government browser testing guidelines. These suggested that for government web sites, webmasters need not test in less popular browsers (those with ...

By Bruce Lawson | January 19th, 2009

Support the W3C Validators

The W3C has launched a donation and sponsorship program to support the free validators provided by the organization. Give today!

By Kimberly Blessing | December 20th, 2008

BSI British Standards invites comments on new draft standard on accessible web content

BSI British Standards is inviting all interested parties, and in particular marketing professionals and disabled web users, to review and comment on the draft of a new standard on accessible web content. DPC BS 8878 Web accessibility – Building accessible experiences for disabled people – Code of Practice is ...

By Patrick Lauke | December 1st, 2008

Web standards in China

En plus des versions anglaise et chinoise, l'article est désormais également disponible en français. Merci Armony In early October I was lucky enough to spend some time in China talking to web professionals and students alike about web standards and their current status. It was an interesting couple of weeks that ...

By Henny Swan | November 24th, 2008

WCAG 2 and mobileOK Basic Tests specs are proposed recommendations

WCAG 2 and the mobileOK Basic Tests specifications have been moved to "proposed recommendation status" by the W3C, which means that the technical material is complete and it has been implemented in real sites. WCAG 2 Shawn Henry writes of WCAG 2, Over the last few months, the Web Content ...

By Bruce Lawson | November 4th, 2008

UK government draft browser guidance is daft browser guidance

This blog post is superseded by UK government browser guidelines: good sense prevails. Last friday, the UK government's Central Office of Information (COI) published a public consultation on browser standards for public sector websites: This guidance has been developed to assist those delivering public sector websites to determine which web browsers to ...

By Bruce Lawson | September 8th, 2008

Announcing the WaSP Curriculum Framework

Since March 2008, the WaSP Education Task Force has begun working on the WaSP Curriculum Framework, a collection of tools aiming to identify skill sets and competencies that aspiring Web professionals need to acquire to prepare them for their chosen careers, as well as resources that will help both educators and students.

By Steph Troeth | July 31st, 2008

This is your mobile device on Acid

The W3C's Mobile Web Test Suites Working Group have just announced a new suite of tests for mobile devices. In the spirit of the Acid tests, the test results are returned in an easily grokable visual manner—the green squares are desirable, the red squares mean a feature isn't yet supported. The ...

By Jeremy Keith | April 16th, 2008

Showing Off My <body> and Loving It

I’m so tired of people half-assing it on Casual Day, but Naked Day? Now you have my full attention

By Christopher Schmitt | April 7th, 2008

Annual Public WaSP Meeting at SXSW

All SXSW Interactive attendees are welcome to attend WaSP's annual public meeting which will be held tomorrow, Monday, March 10. The session runs from 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm (Central Daylight Time) and will be held in room 19AB (Level 4). Everyone is welcome to join our Meebo chat as ...

By Kimberly Blessing | March 9th, 2008

Street Team: Make Your Mark

The WaSP Street Team launches its first community project: bookmarks which you can place in libraries, schools, and bookstores to help signal to readers that the material is out of date.

By Glenda Sims | March 8th, 2008

Acid3: Putting Browser Makers on Notice, Again.

It's been three years since we told browser makes that we want to see them smile, but now we wanna hold their hand. Acid3 goes beyond the CSS tests implemented by Acid2 and tests a browser's DOM Scripting capability, as well as continuing to probe visual rendering of CSS, SVG and ...

By Drew McLellan | March 3rd, 2008

Yahoo! UK & Ireland TV Listings site relaunches, chock full of standards

While it's become much more common than, say, a couple years ago, it still deserves mention whenever a high-profile website relaunches with exemplary web development practices. Such is the case with the Yahoo! UK & Ireland TV Listings site, which this past week relaunched with some of the leanest and ...

By Faruk Ateş | March 1st, 2008

WaSP Round Table: IE8′s Default Version Targeting Behavior

One week ago, several WaSP members took the time to have a virtual sit-down with Chris Wilson of Microsoft to talk about IE8′s proposed default behavior of having to opt-in for the browser’s new standards mode.

By Aaron Gustafson | February 24th, 2008

DOM Scripting: A Web Standard

Following @media 2005 — the first Web Standards conference in Europe — a group of front-end coders gathered in a pub in London to discuss JavaScript. JavaScript had a problem. Its reputation was tarnished, to say the least. The common perception of client-side scripting was frozen in the late '90s ...

By Jeremy Keith | February 20th, 2008

Hug your bike, drink a beer and discuss a browser

March is coming up and for most people in the web standards community, that means at least one thing: SXSW! The Web Standards Project will be present again this year, with our annual meeting (held on Monday the 10th, exact details to follow soon). Because there's so much going on in ...

By Faruk Ateş | February 5th, 2008

Microsoft’s Version Targeting Proposal

Over at A List Apart today is Aaron Gustafson's article Beyond DOCTYPE: Web Standards, Forward Compatibility, and IE8, introducing a controversial proposal from Microsoft that developers should start locking their pages into set browser versions. Although members of the WaSP Microsoft Task Force were very much involved in this proposal, it ...

By Drew McLellan | January 22nd, 2008

Opera complains to Europe over IE lock-in

Opera Chief Technology Officer and co-inventor of CSS, Håkon Wium Lie has written an open letter to the Web community explaining the reasons that Opera has filed an antitrust complaint with the European Union to force Microsoft to support open Web standards in Internet Explorer and to unbundle Internet ...

By Bruce Lawson | December 13th, 2007

The Email Standards Project

We all know that email clients aren’t consistent in their support of Web standards. Crafting an HTML email that renders correctly on most email clients is a delicate process which typically involves extra coding and a lot of guesswork. Up until now, we’ve begrudgingly accepted life this way… but a new effort aims to change that!

By Kimberly Blessing | November 28th, 2007

Wear the Blue Beanie with Pride

In honor of Jeffrey Zeldman’s blue beanie on the cover of his classic book, Monday, November 26th is blue beanie day. You can participate and share the Web standards benefits with everyone!

By Stephanie (Sullivan) Rewis | November 23rd, 2007

Business Week: Jeffrey Zeldman: King of Web Standards

This week, Business Week has published a Special Report on WASP co-founder Jeffrey Zeldman.

By Andy Clarke | August 7th, 2007

Obstacles to Accessible Flash

Adobe Flash can often get a bad rap from the standards community, but the reality is that there are many situations where Flash is the most appropriate tool for the job. As well as just being the best technology for some applications, the Flash Player also enjoys near ubiquity in ...

By Drew McLellan | August 6th, 2007

Education Task Force Curriculum Survey

The Web Standards Project Education Task Force has created a curriculum survey and seeks input from educational professionals.

By Rob Dickerson | June 13th, 2007

A review of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, May 2007 Working Draft

In last month's Interview with Judy Brewer on WCAG 2.0, we read that:WCAG 2.0 went through several Public Working Drafts in recent years, and a Last Call Working Draft in 2006. Each Working Draft was sent out for public review — altogether to hundreds of individuals, organizations, and lists around ...

By Patrick Lauke | June 11th, 2007

Current browsers and the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0

In web accessibility, you’ll often hear emphasis being placed on the duty of web authors to create accessible content. However, this is only one part of the web accessibility equation.One that has been particularly close to me, or rather one that has provided me with a lot of opportunity to ...

By Patrick Lauke | May 20th, 2007

Call for Review: Updated WCAG 2.0 Working Draft

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (WCAG WG) invites you to comment on an updated draft of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0), published on 17 May 2007. WCAG 2.0 addresses accessibility of Web content for people with disabilities.The updated WCAG 2.0 Public Working Draft incorporates changes ...

By Patrick Lauke | May 17th, 2007

Browser, Standards and Interop Summit in Paris

The XTech 2007 conference is taking place at the Novotel Paris Tour Eiffel in Paris next week from the 15th to the 18th of May. On the first day of the conference, Molly and Edd have organised the first annual Browser, Standards and Interop Summit to run all day in parallel ...

By Jeremy Keith | May 11th, 2007

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