Working together for standards The Web Standards Project

Buzz Archives: Web Standards (general)

HTML5? Check. Accessible HTML5? Um…

The Paciello Group and others are examining the accessibility of HTML5 implementations across the current spate of browsers. Their findings are a little disheartening.

By Aaron Gustafson | February 1st, 2011

Interview with Ian Hickson, editor of the HTML 5 specification.

You've heard it's coming in 2012. Or maybe 2022. It's certainly not ready yet, but some parts are already in browsers now so for the standards-savvy developers, the future is worth investigating today. Ian "Hixie" Hickson, editor of the HTML 5 specification, hopes that the spec will go to ...

By Bruce Lawson | May 13th, 2009

Web Standards in Indonesia – a university web developer perspective

When in Indonesia Bruce Lawson, co-lead of the Accessibility Task Force, got the opportunity to interview Widianto Nugroho from Institut Teknologi Bandung. What follows is the transcript of their chat as well as links to useful resources for anyone interested in web standards in Indonesia. Take it away Bruce! I was ...

By Henny Swan | February 20th, 2009

Opera Web Standards Curriculum translations available

I'm always on the look out for translations of good resources into multiple languages so it's great to see the Opera Web Standards Curriculum starting to be translated into Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, Hungarian, Italian and Russian. The curriculum, which will work in parallel with the upcoming Web Standards Framework from WaSP, ...

By Henny Swan | February 3rd, 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

WCAG 2.0 is a W3C Recommendation

After 9.5 years of work, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 have reached W3C Recommendation status. On behalf of the WaSP Accessibility Task Force, I'd like to welcome WCAG 2 officially into the pantheon of Web standards. I think this tweet by caledoniaman sums up the level of anticipation: WCAG 2.0 and ...

By Matt May | December 11th, 2008

WCAG 2.0 resources

Here's a starter list of some resources to help transition to WCAG 2 from the world of WCAG 1, now the new standard goes to proposed recommendation status. This is just a starter list; please add other resources that you recommend in the comments. It would be great to have ...

By Bruce Lawson | November 6th, 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

2008 survey of people who make websites

In case you haven't seen it, please invest ten minutes of your time to complete the 2008 A List Apart survey so that we can build a snapshot of our industry.

By Bruce Lawson | July 30th, 2008

Curriculum Survey Results

The Web Standards Project Education Task Force release the results of the 2007 Curriculum Survey.

By Rob Dickerson | July 28th, 2008

Opera Web Standards Curriculum

Chris Mills of Opera Software ASA announced today the release of the Opera Web Standards Curriculum. The initial 23 of 50 proposed articles are published and available.

By Rob Dickerson | July 8th, 2008

W3C Offers Online Training Course: Mobile Best Practices

The W3C Mobile Web Initiative is offering the online training course: An Introduction to W3C’s Mobile Web Best Practices from May 26 – June 20, 2008. The course is free, registration is open, but limited.

By Holly Marie Koltz | May 4th, 2008

WCAG 2 now “candidate recommendation”

The W3C announced today that WCAG2 is now a candidate recommendation and is likely to be "live" by the end of the year. The W3C says Candidate Recommendation means that we think the technical content is stable and we want developers and designers to start using WCAG 2.0, to test it out ...

By Bruce Lawson | April 30th, 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

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

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

What’s the best test for Acid3?

Now that all the major browsers (and many minor ones) have pledged support for Acid2, Ian Hickson has moved on to preparing Acid3 — and you can help!

By Kimberly Blessing | January 16th, 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

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

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

hAccessibility

By Bruce Lawson and James Craig. (German translation) Microformats are a great idea. They allow the embedding of parsable, semantic data (like contact information and event details) into regular web pages. With the right plug-in, that information can be saved directly to your calendar program or address book. Like Microformats, a ...

By James Craig | April 27th, 2007

The Web Standards Documentary Project

Aarron Walter, a faculty member of The Art Institute of Atlanta, launches The Web Standards Documentary Project.

By Rob Dickerson | April 20th, 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