Working together for standards The Web Standards Project

Buzz Archives: Web Standards (general)

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

Spring Fling

April 5, 2007 sees the Highland Fling in Edinburgh, Scotland – a one-day conference aimed at web developers and businesses with an interest in web standards and accessibility.

By Derek Featherstone | March 27th, 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

Another way to look at validation

In the new issue of A List Apart, WaSP Emeritus Ethan Marcotte questions the way we advocate for standards.

By Aaron Gustafson | March 1st, 2007

Notable web experts who are [x]: Women and non-Caucasians

[To those who are advocates of politically correct language, I apologize in advance for the blunt way in which I frame the role of race in this post.] Between Jason Kottke and WaSP founder Jeffrey Zeldman, the buzz is building yet again on the subject of conference panel composition… specifically, the ...

By Ben Henick | February 25th, 2007

What to do with WCAG 2?

To say that the W3C has been working on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.0 for some time would be an understatement. The first public working draft for WCAG 2 was posted on January 25, 2001 - a full 6 years ago. Just less than a year ago ...

By Derek Featherstone | February 8th, 2007

The Dutch Embrace Web Standards

According to Peter-Paul Koch the new Dutch accessibility laws are pretty sweeping and "go way beyond WCAG". Better yet, they read like a veritable blueprint for modern standards based web development: A few examples will show you where Dutch government accessibility is heading. As of 1 September last year, every website ...

By Dean Edwards | January 15th, 2007

Recent Accessibility Podcasts

Join ATF members Bruce Lawson and Patrick Lauke on some recent podcasts (with transcripts available).

By Derek Featherstone | November 24th, 2006

Have Your Say about the Future of HTML

This article has been written on behalf of the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) and has been cross posted on The Web Standards Project, Lachy’s Log, Molly.com and 456 Berea Street. There’s been a lot of discussion about the W3C’s recent decision to continue the development of HTML ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | November 7th, 2006

Feeling validated

The W3C validator is a great tool. It allows developers to quickly and easily find and fix the inevitable problems that creep into any markup document. As well as the quick'n'easy version, the advanced interface allows you to get a more verbose output. Until recently, one of the options was to ...

By Jeremy Keith | October 31st, 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

Using a sledgehammer to crack a nut

When is a login form not a login form? When it relies totally on JavaScript to let you login, that’s when.

By Ian Lloyd | October 25th, 2006

Video Presentation: Douglas Crockford on the “Theory of the DOM”

Douglas Crockford, discoverer of JSON and JavaScript evangelist/veteran has given a training on the theory of the DOM lately and the videos are available on the web. The course takes you through the theory of the DOM, how browsers implement it and what the problems with the DOM and the ...

By Christian Heilmann | October 18th, 2006

Microformats for cheats

Get the skinny on Microformats with this handy little cheat sheet.

By Ian Lloyd | September 27th, 2006

Advocacy in Education

Hailing from Sweden, Lars Gunther, (relatively unknown to the Web guru world), takes on a sizable challenge and project to educate and advocate Web standards and curriculum change in his country’s educational system.

By Rob Dickerson | September 26th, 2006

Calling all Assistive Technology vendors

WaSP issues an open invitation to work with Assistive Technology vendors to help ensure greater support for standards-based web development techniques in software that enables access for millions of people worldwide.

By Derek Featherstone | August 25th, 2006

IE7: The List is In

A comprehensive list of bug fixes, implementations and developer/designer resources for IE7 has been published by Markus Mielke of Microsoft (and also a member of the W3C CSS Working Group) on the IEBlog today.

By Molly E. Holzschlag | August 22nd, 2006

Flash, JavaScript, UX, standards, apologia, apologies, and one man’s opinions

The recent discussion of plug-in implementation, here and elsewhere, points to broader issues that affect everyone who is invested in web standards adoption.

By Ben Henick | August 18th, 2006

Flash, JavaScript, and web standards: like sodium and water?

As expected, Flash and such are proven a controversial topic.

By Ben Henick | August 17th, 2006

Check out IconFactory.com

Over the last week we've been noticing the short teaser movies at Iconfactory.com. We could tell that something was up, but we weren't sure quite what. Now, it's official: they've redesigned, and it not only looks great, it's also standards-compliant XHTML and CSS. To the folks at IconFactory: great job, and ...

By Dori Smith | August 3rd, 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

Misplaced Anger: A Rebuttal to Zeldman’s Criticism of the W3C

There’s been discussion in the community about unrest at the W3C. This isn’t exactly news to most, particularly if you’ve been following the WCAG 2.0 saga. This time, however, the criticism comes from a strong voice, none other than Jeffrey Zeldman.

By Molly E. Holzschlag | July 26th, 2006

JavaScript beyond the browser

It's always interesting to see Web Standards used in a setting outside the browser. Did you know, for instance, that the chat client Adium can be skinned using CSS? JavaScript is showing up in more and more desktop apps. Apple's Dashboard and Yahoo's widgets (formerly Konfabulator) are the obvious examples. But ...

By Jeremy Keith | June 23rd, 2006

It Was 5 Years Ago Today …

It’s been just over five years since the publication of a couple of articles about using CSS for layout were published, but where are we now?

By Ian Lloyd | June 7th, 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

Lessons that the standardization process can teach us

Over at Six Apart they’re working to turn Trackback into a standard, and WaSP emeritus Anil Dash shares some of the wisdom he’s gained from the process. Some of the points he makes have bearing on the things we’re trying to accomplish over here at WaSP…

By Ben Henick | May 1st, 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

Tasty Bites for Standardistas

John Oxton reveals some tasty web standards morsels for you to have a nibble on.

By Ian Lloyd | April 19th, 2006

Spiffy Markup?

A new time-saving tool to create rounded corners constructed with CSS does the rounds – but is it really so spiffy?

By Ian Lloyd | April 5th, 2006

Blogger – Can I get in please?

How Blogger blocks users from getting past the front door when the browser is JavaScript-capable but is sitting behind script blocking firewalls – and how it’s not alone in making this mistake.

By Ian Lloyd | April 3rd, 2006

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