Buzz Archives for August 2002
Building A Better Lizard
Mozilla 1.1 has been officially released, and now stalks the countryside spreading improved support for CSS, HTML and DOM. In addition to a number of DHTML-targeted performance enhancements, Mozilla sports a suite of cool developer tools (like the ever-improving Venkman JavaScript debugger and DOM Inspector) and welcome user interface ...
By Scott Andrew LePera | Filed in Browsers
- But it will be unexciting and I will lose customers…wrong!
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The W3C QAIG released a useful set of talking points for dealing with recalcitrant standards opponents.
By Steven Champeon | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- W3C to Write Clearer Guidelines?
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Yesterday, August 26, 2002, the Quality Assurance (QA) Working Group released a Working Draft of the specification guidelines for QA Framework. The goal of this document is to provide a framework for all Working Groups within the W3C to write "clearer, more implementable, and better testable technical reports." Will this honestly ...
By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in W3C/Standards Documentation
- BT Does Not Own the Web
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The lawsuit filed by British Telecom, claiming it has a patent on hyperlinks, has been kicked out of court.
By Steven Champeon | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- 4.6 out of 100 W3C Members Comply
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Do W3C member organizations follow W3C recommendations? Marko Karppinen wanted to know. Six months ago, Marko tested all 506 W3C member sites and found that only 18 used valid HTML or XHTML. Put another way, only 3.7% of W3C members followed W3C recommendations. Put yet another way, 96.3% of W3C ...
By Jeffrey Zeldman | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- Opera 7 all new engine? “Better” DOM support?
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That's what Paul Festa reports in his August 20th article, Opera casts off legacy code for speed. Many of us have hoped that Opera would listen to the numerous complaints about lack of DOM support for their otherwise very good browser. Many developers out there may feel that Paul's article ...
By Shirley Kaiser | Filed in Browsers
- Hotmail Versus Mozilla
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Justin Skolnick points out that Hotmail, or more properly, Passport, is rejecting Mozilla (gif) as not being a "current Web browser". Funny, you'd think that after four and a half years, Microsoft would have heard of Mozilla by now. Or maybe they're just upset about the whole AOL/Mac thing...
By Steven Champeon | Filed in Browsers
- AOL now with Gecko!
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AOL released a new version of their software that is based on Mozilla's Gecko rendering engine, for the Macintosh. A good sign for those who want to build a single site that works in AOL and in standards-compliant browsers.
By Steven Champeon | Filed in Browsers
- Bank Idiocy
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At home in Canada I bank with a perfectly respectable institution called CIBC, been a customer for a while, even use their online stockbroker. Until now. I've switched to a Macintosh and none of the browsers on OS X (IE, Mozilla, you name it) can get into the online trading ...
- The Webmonkey Talks Standards
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Paul Boutin has written a wonderful new article for Webmonkey: Web Standards for Hard Times. In it, Paul makes the case for using standards (it actually saves time and money!), explains the ins and outs of the the DOCTYPE declaration, and preaches the importance of validating your markup and CSS. ...
By Eric Costello | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- Bobby Bought
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Bobby, the accessibility validator created by Cast.org, has been acquired by Watchfire, maker of web management solutions. (Hat tip: Tiffany Brown.) [Update: Bobby is now WebXACT.]
By Jeffrey Zeldman | Filed in Accessibility
- CSS 2.1
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As if XHTML 2.0, XHTML 1.0 2/e, and the prospect of tableless search portals was not enough for you, now there is a new version of the CSS 2 Recommendation for your perusal.
By Steven Champeon | Filed in CSS
- XHTML 2.0
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The W3C has published the XHTML 2.0 Working Draft. No DTDs or Schemae yet, but they say they will be forthcoming once the language stabilizes. It is worth noting that the introduction explicitly states that it is not intended to be backwards compatible with the earlier versions of HTML and ...
By Steven Champeon | Filed in HTML/XHTML, W3C/Standards Documentation
- New Zealand Promotes Web Standards
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New Zealand's e-government initiative has published its Web Guidelines, which include an endorsement of the use of standards such as CSS, XML, and the WAI, the Web Accessibility Initiative. Thanks to Richard Hulse for the pointer.
By Steven Champeon | Filed in Accessibility, Web Standards (general)
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One of the common complaints about building Web applications (either client-side or those that use both client and server as platforms for development) is the difficulty that comes along with debugging them. In the cover story in this month's New Architect, this correspondent discusses some tips for managing the debugging ...
By Steven Champeon | Filed in General
- Ars Technica Reviews Mozilla
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Ars Technica has released a detailed review of Mozilla, not just from the perspective of whether it is good enough to make you finally switch to a browser that understands and supports Web standards, but also discusses whether it is a success as a product of their original mission. Contains ...
By Steven Champeon | Filed in General
- XHTML 1.0, Second Edition
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XHTML 1.0 Second Edition has left the building. It’s not a revision to XHTML, but simply the latest version of W3C’s official documentation about the XHTML 1.0 standard. Among other things, this version finally includes a warning about the optional XML declaration that wreaks havoc with many browsers old and ...
By Jeffrey Zeldman | Filed in HTML/XHTML, W3C/Standards Documentation
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 (27)