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Buzz Archives: Microsoft

An End to Aging IE Installs

Do you hear that sound? That’s right Johnny, it’s the sound of millions of web professionals breathing a collective sigh of relief.

By Aaron Gustafson | December 15th, 2011

IE9 looks really promising

The IE9 “developer previews” continue to impress. HTML5, CSS3, & speed improvements FTW!

By Aaron Gustafson | June 28th, 2010

IE8 Has Arrived

With a greater focus on standards-compliance, it seems possible that Microsoft’s latest browser may redeem itself in the eyes of standards-savvy designers and developers.

By Aaron Gustafson | March 20th, 2009

Microsoft releases the first IE8 Beta

In other news, the ACID2 test page has become overwhelmed.

By Aaron Gustafson | March 5th, 2008

Microsoft rethinks IE8′s default behavior

Perhaps it was our complaining or perhaps it was a reconsideration of its own interoperability principles, but Microsoft has decided to change its course on IE8 and will opt-in to its new standards mode by default.

By Aaron Gustafson | March 3rd, 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

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

Opting-in to standards support

In this week’s issue of A List Apart, I was (finally) able to reveal Microsoft’s new strategy for forward-compatibility, a strategy that was developed hand-in-hand with several of us here at WaSP.

By Aaron Gustafson | January 22nd, 2008

IE8 passes Acid2 test

Blimey. Cor luvvaduck and no mistake. Just after the announcement that Opera are complaining to the European Union about Internet Explorer's dodgy standards support, Chris Wilson reports that an internal build of Internet Explorer 8 passes the Acid2 test. This doesn't necessarily mean that IE8 has fixed all its float oddities, ...

By Bruce Lawson | December 19th, 2007

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

Bringing standards to Microsoft

WaSP Emeritus (and former fearless leader) Molly Holzschlag is settling into her new position at Microsoft this week and has begun reporting from the trenches with an overview of what she’ll be doing while she’s there.

By Aaron Gustafson | April 2nd, 2007

A Shopping List For Standards?

Molly is heading for Microsoft and wants to know what your hot topics are where standards and Microsoft are concerned.

By Ian Lloyd | March 18th, 2007

Which is better for the web: single vendor homogeneity, or OSS/Web 2.0-style innovation?

Brendan Eich, the principal creator of JavaScript and one of the leading developers for the Mozilla project, follows up his SXSW presentation, which illustrates parallels between historical examples of user-community-driven innovation and the current state of affairs in the web useragent space. (Say that fast ten times.) In today’s post ...

By Ben Henick | March 12th, 2007

You’re looking swell, Molly

All of you reading this post will agree with me that even given our chorus of voices, we can't sing enough praises about Molly for her energy and all the work she undertakes in what she strongly believes in. Nor can we match in harmony with her gift to communicate, ...

By Steph Troeth | January 30th, 2007

You can improve IE.next

If you’ve ever wanted the opportunity to tell Microsoft what they should do with IE next, now is the time.

By Aaron Gustafson | November 4th, 2006

Microsoft predicts swift adoption of IE7

Earlier this week, Chris Wilson of the IE team revealed some numbers he feels point to a swifter adoption of IE7 than previously thought.

By Aaron Gustafson | October 28th, 2006

IE7 JavaScript Improvements

The IEBlog recently reported some improvements in IE7’s JavaScript engine.

By Dean Edwards | September 21st, 2006

IE6: the end is (hopefully) near

Hot on the heels of the IE7 Βeta 3 release, Microsoft has announced plans to roll out the final standalone version of IE7 via its Automatic Update service.

By Aaron Gustafson | July 26th, 2006

Microsoft Expression Preview Release

Set to debut in June of 2006 Microsoft has publically released a free trial preview of its newest web authoring tool, Microsoft Expression Web Designer.

By Holly Marie Koltz | May 15th, 2006

Even Scoble Says Nay Nay

No, this isn't a comedy routine with the fabulous John Pinette taking the stage. It's part of an ongoing tragic saga of Web sites that are browser-specific. Nothing new there, as we all know. In this case, they're all Microsoft sites, alas, and even Robert Scoble is just saying no. While ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | May 8th, 2006

A DOM Scripting Wishlist for Microsoft

Peter Paul Koch has kick-started a discussion called “IE 7 and JavaScript: what needs to be fixed?”

By Jeremy Keith | April 30th, 2006

!important Fixed in Later IE7 Releases

It was brought to my attention today that the IE7 Beta 2 Preview wasn't honoring the role of the !important declaration and as such was causing alternative box model hacks to fail. !important is important for several important reasons. First is the very reason !important exists, which is to ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | February 3rd, 2006

Star HTML and Microsoft IE7

Chris Wilson, Group Program Manager for IE Platform and Security at Microsoft, and Position is Everything's Big John Gallant have been having a conversation about * html in Microsoft's upcoming Internet Explorer 7 for Windows (IE7). Wilson has been encouraging CSS designers and developers to repair any bug-specific hacks ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | December 22nd, 2005

Pandora’s Box (Model) of CSS Hacks And Other Good Intentions

This Thanksgiving I’ve decided it’s about time that I provided some more background and analysis on one of the things I am certainly unintentionally (in)famous for.

By Tantek Çelik | November 27th, 2005

IE7 Conditional Comments

In mid October, the IE Blog urged developers to stop using CSS hacks to workaround IE's problems, and start relying on Microsoft's proprietary conditional comments. I wrote up my thoughts about the new syntax, and it seemed practical enough considering that IE7 is looking to address most of the reasons ...

By Dave Shea | November 3rd, 2005

WaSP Microsoft Task Force Update: Upcoming Products, XAML, Acid2, SXSW, and IE7 Revealed

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

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