Buzz Archives for April 2004
A Roadmap to Standards
Dave Shea: a man with too much time on his hands, or simply chock-full of genius? In either event, dash over to read A Roadmap to Standards. A veritable blognum opus, Dave's essay explains in practical, real-world terms the need for DOCTYPEs, validation, and structured markup — it's a must-read ...
By Ethan Marcotte | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- WSG Interviews Eric Meyer
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The Web Standards Group, known best for their evangelism of standards both online and in the sunny climes of Australia, have posted their Top Ten Questions for Eric Meyer. Eric discusses his new CSS books, along with his opinions on CSS3, where CSS has been, where it's going, and what its ...
By Drew McLellan | Filed in CSS
- more freebies from westciv
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In their ongoing efforts to spread the good word about markup and CSS, Westciv is offering FREE courses on HTML 4 and XHTML starting this week and running for the next several months. The free program is excellent for those brand new to standards, or for those folks using CSS but ...
By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in HTML/XHTML
- DRC? Yeah, You Know Me.
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The Disability Rights Commission (DRC) released a formal accessibility review of one thousand UK websites today. Their findings paint a bleak picture: in their automated tests, 81% of the sites tested failed to reach the minimum standard for accessibility; additionally, 585 accessibility and usability problems were uncovered in user testing ...
By Ethan Marcotte | Filed in Accessibility
- Safety First
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We've all been there. You've got a blog. You've spent hours getting the templates and CSS just right. It even validates. You are the model of a cool, modern, standards aware weblogger. So you post a new entry to let the world know that you are now compliant. You even ...
By Anders Pearson | Filed in HTML/XHTML
- W3C Recs the DOM3 Core
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The Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Core Specification was released today by the W3C as a full-fledged Recommendation. This module provides the foundation for all the other modules in the DOM Level 3 architecture. Also today, the DOM Level 3 Load & Save module, which defines the interface for dynamically ...
By Porter Glendinning | Filed in DOM, W3C/Standards Documentation
- New Zealand Hearts Standards
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In a sweeping online initiative, the New Zealand government has set a 1 January 2006 deadline for all government websites to comply (article no longer available) with the national accessibility guidelines. The mandates were issued in the spirit of ensuring New Zealanders' right of access to government information and services ...
By Ethan Marcotte | Filed in Accessibility, Web Standards (general)
- El Reg in CSS
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The Register, the web's most vitriolic source of IT industry news, has made the leap to CSS and web standards - and they've done it with style. The new site validates as XHTML 1.0 Transitional and makes extensive use of CSS. While they still use a solitary table for their ...
By Simon Willison | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- NN4.x Layouts
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Still stuck supporting Netscape Navigator 4.x? Our deepest condolences. But all is not lost. Found recently: NN4-compatible XHTML/CSS 3 column layouts. (see also: CSS Layouts for Netscape 4) Complicated CSS-based layouts that actually work in NN4? The mind boggles, but there you go — it can be done!
- The Way Forward With Web Standards
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MACCAWS (Making A Commercial Case for Adopting Web Standards) have finally released their first white paper, The Way Forward with Web Standards. A document aimed at the technically minded, it presents an exhaustive business case for web standards while debunking common myths and misperceptions. And for the standards-naïve manager ...
By Ethan Marcotte | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- W3C Link Checker Stands Alone
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The W3C link checker has been upgraded, and a standalone version released. You can: Check your links online. Download the standalone link checker utility. Both the service and the standalone tool are free. As always, the W3C is openly soliciting your feedback and bug reports about its validation products and services.
By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Authoring Tools
- W32ValidXHTML.A On The Loose
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Antivirus software maker McAfee announced today that a new virus is making the rounds. The infection is spreading with ferocity among Web servers and desktop Windows systems alike, taking advantage of an obscure bug in the SMB file-sharing protocol that allows people named "Denis" to install software remotely without the ...
By Steven Champeon | Filed in April Fools
- March for Web Standards
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As we code, we must make the pledge that we shall always code for the future. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of web standards, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as our pages cannot avail themselves ...
By Ethan Marcotte | Filed in April Fools
- Web Standards Perk Up More Than Your Site
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Scientists from Johns Hopkins University in conjunction with the W3C today announced the results of a study showing a strong correlation between the use of non-standard, proprietary markup and erectile dysfunction in Web developers. According to the senior researcher Dr. Ella Mensa-Lechter, “Subjects who kept their structure clean noticed a ...
By Porter Glendinning | Filed in April Fools
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)