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Buzz Archives: Web Standards (general)

Valid XHTML + Flash

This site uses Flash. This site validates as XHTML.

By Jeffrey Zeldman | November 9th, 2002

Valid Approaches To Content Management

IN A WORLD...where legacy content and gargantuan management systems routinely churn out inaccessible, invalid HTML...the liveSTORYBOARD CMS is a taking a giant step in the right direction. Like many tools, liveSTORYBOARD offers WYSIWYG editing from the browser, but saves the input in an XML format, using an XSLT engine to ...

By Scott Andrew LePera | November 5th, 2002

AIFIA XHTML/CSS Site Launch

The folks at the Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture understand the benefits of structured markup and logical separation of content from style - they've launched the AIFIA site with an attractive XHTML/CSS layout that degrades nicely in older and text-only browsers, and even throws Netscape 4 a little love. ...

By Scott Andrew LePera | November 4th, 2002

More On Banks and So-Called Alternative Browsers

The Register published a list this week of banks who do, and do not, support so-called "alternative browsers", namely, "anything but IE and Netscape Navigator 4.*". It appears to be an abbreviated list, compared to other lists of banks that reject browsers on baseless grounds; perhaps, given the notorious conservatism ...

By Steven Champeon | October 25th, 2002

Article: The Secret Life of Markup

Webmonkey has published a new article by the WaSP's own Steven Champeon: The Secret Life of Markup. It's a must-read for any HTML author, and for anyone else who wants to better understand the craft of web development. And be sure to read to the end, or you'll miss what ...

By Eric Costello | October 15th, 2002

Wired Redesigns With CSS

Wired has redesigned with an all-CSS design that looks fantastic. No tables for layout. Due to a few glitches in the markup, the page falls short of full validity as XHTML 1.0 Transitional. Seeing as how most of those glitches seem to come from tag soup-spewing ad servers, we'll go ...

By Scott Andrew LePera | October 11th, 2002

W3C Rejects RAND

The W3C Patent Policy Working Group has rejected the misguided RAND proposal that caused such a furor last year. More on what this means can be found on Slashdot, explained by Bruce Perens. Not a final victory, but a long step closer to a truly royalty-free Web.

By Steven Champeon | October 8th, 2002

Danger! HipTop May Shred Your Design

Reports are trickling in from the field that the long-awaited Danger T-Mobile Sidekick handheld Internet device happily mangles many web pages, including many built with valid XHTML and CSS to specifically cater to such devices. Sidekick owner Leonard Lin discovered that many sites are unreadable in the device. His workaround? ...

By Scott Andrew LePera | October 6th, 2002

Microsoft: The Redesign

Microsoft has redesigned. A review in two words. Invalid. Inaccessible [previously linked to Bobby]. Want more? Undecipherable in a text-only browser. One can only imagine how this site looks to a screen reader. You might think that Microsoft, an influential W3C member that drives the development of web ...

By Scott Andrew LePera | October 6th, 2002

Kentucky!

The Commonwealth of Kentucky is making a serious effort to Do The Right Thing as regards their Web presence. Check out the templates page. It's good to see the public sector being public-spirited.

By Tim Bray | September 20th, 2002

One Man’s Journey

Randal Rust's Alphabet Soup: A web designer's journey to standards and accessibility describes how one man came to understand markup, css, and accessibility techniques. An informative, enjoyable read, especially for those new to standards.

By Molly E. Holzschlag | September 13th, 2002

Yay Lycos! (We Think)

This showed up on a public W3C list back in July and just came across our radar. Obviously good news if true. I can't find an example deployed anywhere else but jscript.dk. Anyone have an update for us?

By Tim Bray | September 12th, 2002

It has architecture?

W3C has a Technical Architecture Group (TAG) that's supposed to worry about corner cases and consistency. Last week marked the publication of the TAG's first cut at an overview of the Web's architecture. It's not light reading, and it doesn't say a thing about design or style or HTML, but those ...

By Tim Bray | September 4th, 2002

WaSP at Digital-web

Digital Web, a darn fine webcentric pub, has WaSP stuff this issue, including a state-of-the-art Zeldman rant and a nice three-way conversation with Steven Champeon and Shirley Kaiser. Check it out!

By Tim Bray | September 4th, 2002

But it will be unexciting and I will lose customers…wrong!

The W3C QAIG released a useful set of talking points for dealing with recalcitrant standards opponents.

By Steven Champeon | August 29th, 2002

BT Does Not Own the Web

The lawsuit filed by British Telecom, claiming it has a patent on hyperlinks, has been kicked out of court.

By Steven Champeon | August 26th, 2002

4.6 out of 100 W3C Members Comply

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 | August 23rd, 2002

The Webmonkey Talks Standards

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 | August 7th, 2002

New Zealand Promotes Web Standards

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 | August 3rd, 2002

New Interview of Eric Meyer at Digital Web

Meryl Evans interviews Eric Meyer, well known CSS guru and author, for this week's Digital Web. Eric is also the Standards Evangelist for Netscape and list chaperone for the css-discuss list. Find out what he thinks about standards, CSS, using tables, accessibility, future possibilities, and even his weekly radio show. See ...

By Shirley Kaiser | June 12th, 2002

Recent Buzz

Our Work Here is Done

By Aaron Gustafson | March 1st, 2013

Thanks to the hard work of countless WaSP members and supporters (like you), Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of the web as an open, accessible, and universal community is largely the reality.

When The Web Standards Project (WaSP) formed in 1998, the web was the battleground in an ever-escalating war between two browser makers—Netscape and Microsoft—who were each taking turns “advancing” HTML to the point of collapse. You see, in an effort to one-up each other, the two browsers introduced new elements and new ways of manipulating web documents; this escalated to the point where their respective 4.0 versions were largely incompatible.

Realizing that this fragmentation would inevitably drive up the cost of building websites and ran the risk of denying users access to content and services they needed, Glenn Davis, George Olsen, and Jeffrey Zeldman co-founded WaSP and rallied an amazing group of web designers and developers to help them push back. The WaSP’s primary goal was getting browser makers to support the standards set forth by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

In 2001, with the browser wars largely over, WaSP began to shift its focus. While some members continued to work with browser vendors on improving their standards support, others began working closely with software makers like Macromedia to improve the quality of code being authored in tools such as Dreamweaver. And others began the hard slog of educating web designers and developers about the importance of using web standards, culminating in the creation of WaSP InterAct, a web curriculum framework which is now overseen by the W3C.

Thanks to the hard work of countless WaSP members and supporters (like you), Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of the web as an open, accessible, and universal community is largely the reality. While there is still work to be done, the sting of the WaSP is no longer necessary. And so it is time for us to close down The Web Standards Project.

Many (if not all) of us are continuing to work in the world of web standards, but our work is now largely outside the umbrella of WaSP. If you are interested in continuing to work on web standards-related projects along with us, we humbly suggest you follow these projects:

• A List Apart – The magazine “for people who make websites” is run by WaSP founder Jeffrey Zeldman and is a consistent source of forward-thinking articles and tutorials.
• HTML5 Doctor – A solid resource and discussion forum on all things HTML5, brought to you by Bruce Lawson and his team.
• W3C Community Groups – If you have a passion for a specific web technology, you can help make it better by participating in one (or more) community groups. In particular, you might be interested in one of these: Core Mobile Web Platform, Responsive Images, Web Education, and Web Media Text Tracks.
• WebPlatform.org – A fantastic web standards resource, providing up-to-date documentation, Q&As, tutorials & more. Chris Mills, Doug Schepers, and a number of other standards advocates are involved in this project.
• Web Standards Sherpa – An educational resource founded by WaSP which continues to operate under the leadership of Chris Casciano, Virginia DeBolt, Aaron Gustafson, and Emily Lewis.
• Web Standards + Small Business – An outreach project started by WaSP that educates small businesses about why they should care about web standards. This project is overseen by Aaron Gustafson.

The job’s not over, but instead of being the work of a small activist group, it’s a job for tens of thousands of developers who care about ensuring that the web remains a free, open, interoperable, and accessible competitor to native apps and closed eco-systems. It’s your job now, and we look forward to working with you, and wish you much success.

Nota bene: In the near future, we will be making a permanent, static archive of webstandards.org and some of our other resources like WaSP Interact to preserve them as a resource and to provide a record of our 15-year mission to improve the web.
Bruce Lawson and Steph Troeth contributed to this post.

Filed in WaSP Announcement | Comments (89)

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Title	Author
Call for action on Vendor Prefixes	Rachel Andrew
An End to Aging IE Installs	Aaron Gustafson
Beyond the Blue Beanie?	Stephanie (Sullivan) Rewis
The Sherpas are Here	Aaron Gustafson