Buzz Archives for July 2002
No tables for Lycos
Lycos Europe will be moving to a new design that validates as XHTML 1.0 Transitional and uses CSS for layout. (Netscape 4 users will get a plain text version with no formatting.) Spotted by Tom Gilder, reported in W3C’s public evangelist archives. Hat tip: Tantek Çelik.
By Jeffrey Zeldman | Filed in CSS
- 37signals.com redesigns with XHTML and CSS
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37 Signals, a smart agency for accessible, usable, yet beautiful web design, has today launched a slight redesign of their company site with validating XHTML Transitional and CSS.
By Eric Costello | Filed in Design
- Amaya Updated
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The W3C web editor/browser Amaya has been updated. Version 6.2 increases support for CSS, XHTML, SVG, and MathML. Amaya is not a commercial browser like IE, Navigator, Opera, et al. W3C members use it to demonstrate and test new developments in web protocols and data formats. W3C Jigsaw plays a ...
By Jeffrey Zeldman | Filed in General
- FrontPage gets LIFT
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UsableNet announced yesterday it has integrated its LIFT product into Microsoft FrontPage, the vastly popular (though not particularly standards-friendly) web authoring tool. UsableNet’s LIFT, previously incorporated in Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, encourages accessible authoring techniques and includes built-in accessibility validators and reference guides. LIFT won’t stop FrontPage from generating proprietary non-standard markup, ...
By Jeffrey Zeldman | Filed in Authoring Tools
- Dreamweaver Task Force
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The WaSP's Dreamweaver Task Force has posted an assessment of Dreamweaver MX. The Task Force worked with Macromedia through various stages of product development to help improve Dreamweaver's support for web standards and accessibility.
By Jeffrey Zeldman | Filed in Adobe TF, Authoring Tools
- New CSS Tutorial: Web Page Reconstruction with CSS
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Although spilling into July a bit, Digital Web has one more tutorial for its June CSS theme. Web Page Reconstruction with CSS by Christopher Schmitt is one of the best CSS tutorials I've seen around for helping to understand the thinking and decision-making process behind markup. This is a terrific ...
By Shirley Kaiser | Filed in CSS
- a few valid points
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news.com misses the point
By Steven Champeon | Filed in General
- New Web standards education and outreach forum
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W3C is starting a new discussion list, the Web standards education and outreach forum, for Web standards evangelists, authors, and others to discuss ways to improve the quality of web-standards related books, publications, lectures and training courses. Hope to see you there! hat tip: Eric Meyer
By Shirley Kaiser | Filed in General
The Web Standards Project is a grassroots coalition fighting for standards which ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all.
Recent Buzz
A New Direction and a New Project
By Aaron Gustafson | February 2nd, 2010
In an effort to increase adoption of web standards, we’re going to try something new.
A lot of you are probably wondering where the WaSP of the late ’90s or even the early ’00s has gone. Where are the actions? Where is the advocacy? Who should we be mad at today?
The truth is that this organization is evolving. For the last two years, a large amount of our focus has been placed on education, realized in our creation of the InterAct curriculum framework and the birth of the Open Web Education Alliance. With the lion’s share of our talent and energy devoted to these efforts, things have been noticeably quiet on this blog, but that’s not an excuse…we can and should be doing more to promote the understanding and use of web standards. After all that’s what we were formed to do.
For the last two or three years, WaSP’s relevance has definitely diminished. With a few exceptions, browsers are doing a darn good job of promoting standards. Techniques we championed, such as Unobtrusive JavaScript and Progressive Enhancement, have become engrained in the methodology of many great web agencies and in-house web teams. In many ways, it seems WaSP has won the war for web standards, but has it really? There are still a ton of small web companies and small to mid-sized businesses building websites with little or no regard for cross-browser /cross-device compatibility. Inaccessible sites and applications, especially in this age of Ajax, seem to pop up every few seconds.
These projects have been put together by web designers and developers we’ve never reached and, for the last few years, we’ve been trying to figure out how to change that. Sure, our education effort is a logical means of teaching the next generation of web designers and developers to do things the Right Way™, but what of the practicing professionals who either have not been exposed to web standards or have been reluctant to upgrade their skill set? How do we reach them?
One way we hope to move this group in the right direction is by doing an end-run around them in reaching out to small businesses.
Small businesses drive our national economies and are responsible for millions of websites worldwide. Of course, most small businesses don’t know (or even want to know) about the technical aspects of web standards, but they do want to know what will save them money and help them run their businesses more efficiently.
As the first project in our small business outreach effort, WaSP will be developing a resource to be used when interviewing individuals and teams to do web work. The focus of this effort will be a series of questions that, when asked of applicants, will help a small business determine whether or not they have the skills necessary to build a modern website. Each question be coupled with background on the associated topic that outlines why it is important and tips for determining how well the question was answered.
Our goals for this project are two-fold:
- To support small businesses by protecting them from bad developers and making sure they get the best websites possible; and
- To expose individual designers and small web shops to web standards when they go out to bid on projects in hopes that they will choose to upgrading their skills in order to continue getting work.
In order to make this project a success, we need your help. Whether you are interested in helping us collect and organize the content or are keen to promote the resource once it’s complete, we want you to be involved. If you can lend a hand, please say so in a comment on this message and I will be in touch at the beginning of next week.
Filed in Education, Outreach, Training, WaSP Announcement | Comments (38)