Buzz Archives: Opinion
Web standards in China
En plus des versions anglaise et chinoise, l'article est désormais également disponible en français. Merci Armony In early October I was lucky enough to spend some time in China talking to web professionals and students alike about web standards and their current status. It was an interesting couple of weeks that ...
By Henny Swan | November 24th, 2008
- What the Target settlement should mean to you
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It's a question many of us in accessibility have been waiting for years to be answered. Does the Americans with Disabilities Act apply to the web? Sadly, accessibility's ultimate cliffhanger once again reaches an awkward denouement, leaving us deflated, and looking at yet another boring sequel. The National Federation of the Blind ...
By Matt May | August 28th, 2008
- WaSP Round Table: IE8’s Default Version Targeting Behavior
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One week ago, several WaSP members took the time to have a virtual sit-down with Chris Wilson of Microsoft to talk about IE8’s proposed default behavior of having to opt-in for the browser’s new standards mode.
By Aaron Gustafson | February 24th, 2008
- The good, the bad, and the ugly – iPhone edition
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The iPhone has had a tremendous impact on the web, eliciting impassioned testimony from supporters and detractors alike. What does it mean for the web standards? What about the rest of the mobile web? And (how) should we design for it?
By Aaron Gustafson | August 22nd, 2007
- Current browsers and the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0
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In web accessibility, you’ll often hear emphasis being placed on the duty of web authors to create accessible content. However, this is only one part of the web accessibility equation.One that has been particularly close to me, or rather one that has provided me with a lot of opportunity to ...
By Patrick Lauke | May 20th, 2007
- hAccessibility
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By Bruce Lawson and James Craig. (German translation) Microformats are a great idea. They allow the embedding of parsable, semantic data (like contact information and event details) into regular web pages. With the right plug-in, that information can be saved directly to your calendar program or address book. Like Microformats, a ...
By James Craig | April 27th, 2007
- Have Your Say about the Future of HTML
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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
- All aboard the PAS 78 gravy train
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With the extensive media coverage following its launch, a large number of businesses, education establishments and government agencies with a stake in the UK online market should be aware of PAS 78 - Guide to Good Practice in Commissioning Accessible Websites. Partly due to the cost associated with this document, ...
By Patrick Lauke | May 11th, 2006
- Lessons that the standardization process can teach us
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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
- Committed to Sincere Progress, Not Perfection
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Last week a standards friendly redesign of the ABCNews site was announced, only to be met with criticism on the homepage of the Web Standards Project site. An obvious conflict emerges from what we see in the redesigned site under discussion, and in the point of the argument made ...
By WaSP Member | October 18th, 2004
- End of Free IE Not the End of Web Standards
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The WaSP sympathizes with the anxiety Web developers have expressed regarding Microsoft’s recent announcements. In the space of a few short days, we learned that Internet Explorer for Macintosh and Windows would cease to exist as free, standalone products. Instead, they will be integrated into MSN for Macintosh and the ...
By WaSP Member | June 27th, 2003
- New Members, New Directions
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We're trying something new here at the Web Standards project. Instead of griping and complaining about poor support for standards, and giving people tools to discriminate against users of non-compliant browsers, we're going to focus on helping site builders deliver sites that work everywhere. In every browser. On any platform. ...
By WaSP Member | February 14th, 2003
- It’s Spring
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The garden has masses of flowers, the tank tops have come out of storage, and the other day, I was walking a friend through some excellent, beautifully-done, just-created pages over the phone, and we weren’t seeing the same things. “Oh, she said, in an embarrassed tone. It’s just stupid old ...
By WaSP Member | June 10th, 2002
- Expectations and Misunderstandings
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A response to Eric Ott and Al Sparber THE WaSP HAS TAKEN SOME GRIEF lately, both for wanting things that we've asked for and for wanting things that we've never asked for. All we've ever asked is for web developers and designers to have a choice: that if they want to create ...
By WaSP Member | December 10th, 2001
- Of Web Standards & Patents
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WaSP urges all Web developers to read the Patent Policy draft and mail comments to the W3C before the 11 October cutoff date. Our own opinion follows. WaSP to W3C: Remember your Charter and Mission The WaSP would like to commend the W3C for taking the initiative to make explicit its ...
By WaSP Member | September 10th, 2001
- Reply to Mozillazine
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Yesterday, David Flanagan of O'Reilly published an article claiming that the standards compliance of the upcoming Netscape Navigator 6.0 browser was seriously compromised, and requesting that the company postpone the final browser release until it more robustly supports open standards. Mozillazine's Chris Nelson responded with a rant that blasted Mr. Flanagan ...
By WaSP Member | November 7th, 2000
- For the Good of the Web: An Open Letter to Netscape
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TWO YEARS AGO, when your market share was still high as a kite, you pledged to fully support five key standards in the next version of your browser. Having urged you to do this very thing, we praised your decision to everyone who would listen. Developers and the trade press ...
By WaSP Member | July 20th, 2000
- Here We Go Again
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On 27 March, we hailed Microsoft for shipping IE 5/Mac, the first browser to Do The Right Thing with HTML and CSS. Naturally, this pleased our Microsoft friends, while convincing thousands that we were whores of Redmond. On 10 April, we flamed Microsoft for previewing IE 5.5/Windows, a browser that strikes ...
By WaSP Member | April 11th, 2000
- Does The WaSP Hate Microsoft?
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Does The Web Standards Project hate Microsoft? Are we out to get them? Do we punish them for small faults while praising competitors who offer inferior products? Are we secretly siding with Netscape, Sun, Apple, (insert name here)? The perception has come up from time to time, usually in the wake ...
By WaSP Member | March 20th, 1999
- Where’s the beef?
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Greetings gals and guys! Pretend for a moment that it's 1996 again. It was a good year for the web and things were looking better. Microsoft was making bold pronouncements. Do you remember these words? "The Web has been starved for well-designed graphical layout and presentation extensions. We've had ...
By WaSP Member | October 1st, 1998
- DOM de DOM DOM
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I know, fellow travelers. You're hearing the theme from Dragnet just like I am. It's time for The WaSP to take a look at the latest out of the mouths of Microsoft and Netscape. It's actually been a good week for the Web. On the 18th the W3C released ...
By WaSP Member | August 21st, 1998
- Whatever happened to CSS-1?
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Greetings fellow travelers! As you may have guessed it's been pretty busy around WSP headquarters this week. If you've read the press surrounding The Web Standards Project you may have noticed a few discrepancies. I know I did. The first thing I saw was Microsoft trying to sound superior in their ...
By WaSP Member | August 14th, 1998
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)