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Buzz Archives: WaSP Announcement

Our Work Here is Done

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.

By Aaron Gustafson | March 1st, 2013

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

A New Direction and a New Project

In an effort to increase adoption of web standards, we’re going to try something new.

By Aaron Gustafson | February 2nd, 2010

The Dawn of the Education Era

We are proud to announce the WaSP InterAct Curriculum.

By Derek Featherstone | March 16th, 2009

EduTF Report Highlights Curriculum Project

The WaSP Education Task Force (EduTF) report updates our activity, announces new members, and offers a report on a Web standards based Curriculum Project.

By Holly Marie Koltz | May 16th, 2008

Announcing the Adobe Task Force

Today WaSP announced that the Dreamweaver Task Force will be renamed the Adobe Task Force to reflect a widened scope.

By Stephanie (Sullivan) Rewis | March 10th, 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

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

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

WaSP Announces the International Liaison Group (ILG)

A passion and hope I had during my years as Group Lead for the Web Standards Project was to reach out and create a network with peers around the globe. After all, this is the World Wide Web, right? It made sense to me that in order to advance our ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | February 1st, 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

Change in Group Lead

Since taking over the reins of the Web Standards Project from Steve Champeon in early 2004, Molly Holzschlag has led the group though an important phase of its life. Through the development of our successful Task Forces, Molly has helped steer the Project through a significant course change. The close ...

By Drew McLellan | December 20th, 2006

The WaSP Café

Kazuhito Kidachi, the WaSP liaison in Japan, has started a new series of events dubbed the "WaSP Café". It is a social gathering where people can chat about web standards and related topics while drinking a nice cup of coffee. As Kazuhito says, "Why coffee? Because to talk seriously, it's ...

By Faruk Ateş | April 25th, 2006

The Buzz is Black

On March 13, 2006 at SxSW Interactive in Austin, Texas, WaSP unveils a redesigned site.

By Molly E. Holzschlag | March 13th, 2006

Help Free the Web with WaSP

We've stung, we've swarmed, we've buzzed. Sometimes we've failed to make our mark, other times we've been far more successful. But there's one thing that's certain, and that is as of Monday, March 13th, the Web Standards Project enters a new time in its history, opening the hive up ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | March 10th, 2006

World Grows Small(er): Welcome Japan!

It is with great pleasure that I introduce Kazuhito Kidachi as the newest member of WaSP. Kazuhito will be our liaison to Japan, working with the growing number of standards-oriented designers there to spread the good word. With joy and pleasure, welcome, Kazuhito. In other WaSP news, here's what's on tap ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | August 25th, 2005

DWTF Announces New Members

The WaSP Dreamweaver Task Force is pleased to announce the addition of two new members to its ranks. Stephanie Sullivan and Jesse Rogers are both very active and knowledgable Dreamweaver users, who believe in the promotion of web standards. They share the Task Force's common goal of striving to see ...

By Drew McLellan | August 24th, 2005

Frommelt: Pioneering Web Standards in Higher Ed

One of the common hurdles in converting university and college sites to Web standards is due to a decentralized system of Web development within the organization. Daniel Frommelt is the World Wide Web Coordinator for the University of Wisconsin–Platteville and has been instrumental in converting their Web site to XHTML. However, ...

By Steph Troeth | August 1st, 2005

WaSP Interviews Dr. Vito Evola

The web has long since moved out of the IT and design departments and become a pervasive communications medium. As a result, top-notch minds from other disciplines have begun to help make it more robust, vibrant and just plain useful than before. Dr. Evola has one of these minds. He's applying ...

By Chris Kaminski | July 13th, 2005

WaSP to Collaborate with Microsoft to Promote Web Standards

The Web Standards Project (WaSP) is collaborating with Microsoft to promote Web standards and help developers build standards conformant Web applications. Today we formally announce the WaSP / Microsoft Corporation Task Force. WaSP's goal is to provide technical guidance and advice as the company increases Web standards support in its products ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | July 5th, 2005

WaSP Accessibility Task Force

I am very pleased to be able to publicly announce the formation of the WaSP Accessibility Task Force. Bringing together accessibility specialists from across the world, the Accessibility Task Force will work with accessibility organizations, technology vendors and others to help promote Web accessibility. The Task Force members include several WaSPs and ...

By Andy Clarke | June 23rd, 2005

Latest WaSPs

It's with great pleasure that I can announce that two people who I respect the most have agreed to lend their talents to WaSP. Please put your hands together for Derek Featherstone, one of the most articulate and committed accessibility advocates and for fellow BritPacker Jeremy (bringing DOM scripting to the ...

By Andy Clarke | June 22nd, 2005

Hiram College Conversion

A college website, multiple authors, and web standards — how can it be done? The WaSP Education Task Force asked Jonathan Linczak, webmaster and project lead, about the conversion of Hiram College to a standards-compliant website. Jon had been reading about and using standards on sites he had developed before he ...

By Holly Marie Koltz | June 2nd, 2005

Acid2: Putting Browser Makers on Notice

Those with long memories will remember ABBA. The rest of us may just about recall the good work of the CSS Samurai when they launched the Acid Test back in 1997 and challenged makers of browsers world-over to improve their support for CSS 1. Well, dammit, we're at it again. No, ...

By Drew McLellan | April 13th, 2005

Welcoming More WaSPs

There are a couple of new WaSPs trying out their wings. As mentioned in a previous post, there are actually quite a few things happening in the background with the Web Standards Project, and for that we need committed and skilled people. Two such people are Andy Clarke (aka Stuff ...

By Ian Lloyd | April 4th, 2005

What’s Up with WaSP

Maybe we built a hive in your garage, or perhaps we stung you in an unsightly spot. We are truly sorry. We really had promised to be a kinder and gentler sort of WaSP. But then again some of my country's presidents promised the same thing. So let me wake up ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | March 29th, 2005

WaSP Interviews: Jim Ramsey

Another brand new car smellin' WaSP interview is live as Jim Ramsey of the San Francisco Examiner talks about redesigning the site into a Web-standards compliant site. Jim is hooked on standards. He discusses how he took the plunge, how the code stays clean for a large and frequently updated site, ...

By Meryl K. Evans | August 10th, 2004

Washington, DC Web Standards Meetup

[Thomas][1], [Kimberly][2], and [I][3] are trying to light a fire under the monthly [Web Standards Meetup][4] for Washington, DC. Pay no mind to what the Meetup site says--we're still getting together tomorrow night at 8:00pm at the [Capitol Hill Capitol City Brewing Company][5] (in the old post office building next ...

By Porter Glendinning | August 4th, 2004

WaSP Interviews: Ryan Carver

This third edition of WaSP Interviews talks to Ryan Carver about the standards-based redesign of Lee Jeans' onetruefit.com. Ryan discusses the Google boost for the site thanks to his clean markup, the heartache of flicker, the heartbreak of licensing creative work, and a brilliant technique for using the cascade part of ...

By Dave Shea | January 9th, 2004

#ericmeyer:first-child

Most WaSP readers are very familiar with WaSP's good friend Eric Meyer, who has helped the world learn Cascading Style Sheets. Well today, WaSP would like to publicly celebrate the birth and homecoming of Carolyn Maxwell Meyer, first child to Eric and Kat. By all reports she is very ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | December 9th, 2003

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.

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