Buzz Archives for June 2004
JavaScript and Accessibility
I have never done that well with JavaScript in general, much less properly integrating JavaScript into my work. I think that the WCAG 2.0 Scripting group might be just the solution I need. The group emerged today to help make the use of JavaScript more compatible with accessibility. I ...
By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Accessibility, Web Standards (general)
- Internet Explorer Too Risky
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Tired of standards woes related to IE 6.0? So are we. There's been a lot of discussion about how to handle this both at WaSP and around the Web, with some individuals taking a 'wait-and-see' stance and others suggesting an anti-IE protest. Well, if more articles hit the commercial ...
By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Browsers
- Hack for Posterity
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Proving yet again that she has some sort of compulsive publishing disorder, our very own Molly Holzschlag has just written a new article on Strategies for Long-Term CSS Hack Management. Style sheet hacks are a bit of a necessary evil, which can provide an easy workaround to many browsers' CSS ...
By Ethan Marcotte | Filed in CSS
- All in the zlog
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zlog has just published an excellent interview (no longer online) with our very own Drew McLellan. Drew discusses some of the finer points of web standards, stressing some intelligent, real-world approaches to semantic markup. He also alludes that all's not as quiet on the WaSP front as it may seem, ...
By Ethan Marcotte | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- The word for today is “Omtp”
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Looks like another industry is sick and tired of a non-standard mess. The OMTP group aims to define those platform requirements necessary for mobile devices to deliver openly available standardised application interfaces that will provide customers with a more consistent and improved user experience across different devices, whilst also enabling ...
By Matthias Gutfeldt | Filed in Mobile
- Everything
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Every article ever written on web standards article, in one place. Okay, so that's a bit of an exaggeration since most of the links are from the past year or two. But it's safe to say that Dan Cederholm and his readers have managed to generate the most comprehensive listing ever ...
By Dave Shea | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- Ten Questions for Molly Holzschlag
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In the latest of its 'Ten Questions' series, the Web Standards Group gets down to the bone with WaSP's own Molly Holzschlag. Covering such issues as the importance of web standards, teaching CSS, and the market relevance of Movable Type, Molly discusses her current ventures, where she's headed and hints at ...
By Drew McLellan | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- The IE Team Is Listening
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Robert Scoble has provided a helpful list of places you can give your feedback to the Internet Explorer team. Feedback like, say, areas where IE's standards support could use a bit of TLC. This is a great opportunity to provide some polite, useful feedback to the IE team. Stuff like lists ...
By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- Mobile Test Cases
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Patrick Griffiths is interested in the truth about current mobile support of HTML and CSS. A long-standing tenet of CSS design is that a clean separation of structure and presentation ensures proper degradability; and indeed, comparing a heavily table-laden page against a CSS-driven site on many mobiles proves the latter ...
- The Real Reason
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Andrei Herasimchuk explains the real reason you should care about web standards. Buckle up, it's a long read but worth your time (especially if you're an Isaac Asimov fan.)
By Dave Shea | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- W3C Log Validator updated
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A new version of the W3C Log Validator was announced by Olivier Thereaux yesterday on the W3C's validator mailing list. The new version (v 0.3) has added features, bug fixes, and two new modules - CSS Validation and an experimental survey module. Do you need to convert a large web site ...
By Holly Marie Koltz | Filed in Authoring Tools, Validation, Web Standards (general)
- Web Standards Survey
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Read all about it! We have launched a WaSP Survey and a press release today, “Web Standards: Who Cares Anyway?” Here is your chance to let our project team members know who you are and which challenges you encounter when working with or using web standards. Don't be Shy. ...
By Holly Marie Koltz | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- Good GAWDS
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The Guild of Accessible Web Designers (GAWDS) launched last week, and we'd like to welcome them to the standards advocacy block. From the press release announcing their launch: The Guild of Accessible Web Designers marked its launch today by calling upon Web designers to embrace accessibility as the cornerstone and ...
By Ethan Marcotte | Filed in Accessibility
- Election Time
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Here in the Great White North we're deep in the middle of election season. Joe Clark [no, not former Prime Minister Joe Clark] and Craig Saila have compiled an "independent, nonpartisan review of Canadian political Web sites" that finds a massive disconnect between the parties running for leadership, and official ...
By Dave Shea | Filed in Accessibility
- …and answered.
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So, after the gloom'n'doom of the previous post, what is the future of web standards, anyway? Exactly what the WaSP has always said it is: to help web developers do more with less, and pass those savings on to our customers. Want proof? D. Keith Robinson has it. Keith breaks down ...
By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- Question asked…
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In a recent post to his blog, John Allsopp of WestCiv, StyleMaster and CSS Samurai fame asks who cares about web standards? The post is a terriffic then-and-now of standards, and does a nice job of summing up the state of browser support circa spring 2004, and has sparked a ...
By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- DOCTYPES at Twelve Paces
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Sergio Villarreal has a great little article entitled Tables vs. CSS – A Fight To The Death over at SitePoint. It's an excellent blow-by-blow analysis of the benefits to, and drawbacks of, each approach — and naturally, CSS emerges as the author's preferred method. That makes us all sunshine-y inside.
By Ethan Marcotte | Filed in HTML/XHTML
- Where’s WaSP?
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This week, the Web Standards Group interviews Simon Willison, who sheds light on a question we've been challenged with in recent months: Where's WaSP? Simon helps explain: “We're still buzzing away. There's been something of a changing of the guard, with older hands moving in to retirement and fresh blood (such ...
By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Web Standards (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)