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Buzz Archives: DOM

Developer Resources

Yahoo have just added a JavaScript center to their Developer Network.

By Jeremy Keith | December 18th, 2005

AJAX Mistakes

A good list of DOM Scripting mistakes.

By Chris Kaminski | December 6th, 2005

When to use DOM Scripting (and When Not To)

Alex Bosworth has a thoughtful piece on what sorts of apps require DOM Scripting for optimal user experience, and what sorts of apps are better without.

By Chris Kaminski | December 4th, 2005

How to Create User-Friendly Pop-Under Ads

A pop-under ad that avoids the problem of blocking access to content.

By Christian Heilmann | November 7th, 2005

moo.fx Makes it Easy to Add Transition Effects

A small JavaScript library to add powerpoint or flash-like transition effects to web sites: moo.fx.

By Christian Heilmann | October 31st, 2005

Debugging JavaScript with jsTrace

Aaron Gustafson gives us a very handy tool for debugging scripts: jsTrace.

By Jeremy Keith | October 27th, 2005

Spreading the Word

With the release of his new DOM Scripting book, I’ve been on a little talking spree around the Web.

By Jeremy Keith | October 24th, 2005

… And the Winner Is …

We have a winner for the addEvent() recoding contest!

By Peter-Paul Koch | October 18th, 2005

addEvent() Recoding Contest

Here's one for lovers of the language of the rhinos:- over on the WaSP DOM Scripting Task Force blog, PPK announces the launch of a JavaScript addEvent() recoding contest. Write your own version of addEvent() and removeEvent(), submit it by adding a comment to this page, and win JavaScript fame. Entries will ...

By Drew McLellan | September 10th, 2005

addEvent() Recoding Contest

Launching an addEvent() recoding contest.

By Peter-Paul Koch | September 8th, 2005

Unobtrusive Behaviour Layer

Steve Chipman presentation (audio and slides) covers all of the important aspects of modern-day JavaScript in a clear informative way.

By Jeremy Keith | September 3rd, 2005

A Heavy Onload to Carry

Solving the window.onload problem, Allesandro runs through the pros and cons of possible solutions.

By Jeremy Keith | August 29th, 2005

IBM Donates DOM Scripting Accessibility Code to Firefox

IBM’s donation will help developers write accessible DOM Scripting applications, and make Firefox browser more accessible all-round.

By Chris Kaminski | August 16th, 2005

Sortable Lists

Nifty demo of drag’n'drop sortable lists using JavaScript and CSS.

By Chris Kaminski | July 30th, 2005

Best Practices

A nice round-up of best practices for using JavaScript.

By Jeremy Keith | July 27th, 2005

Collaborative bug squashing

Lucian Slatineanu is putting together a DOM script to replace the default form widgets supplied by the browser with other, more customisable elements. He calls the script Niceforms.

By Jeremy Keith | July 25th, 2005

Accessible Event Pairs

In order to keep our pages accessible to non-mouse users, we must use non-mouse events like focus or keydown in addition to mouse events like mouseover and click. On QuirksMode.org I created the new Event pairs page to study this problem.

By Peter-Paul Koch | July 21st, 2005

Unobtrusive Flash Objects

Bobby van der Sluis just published a new article: Unobtrusive Flash Objects (or UFO). His script allows you to specify a placeholder DIV for a Flash object with a message meant for noflash browsers. The script then silently checks if the user has the proper Flash version, and if so replaces ...

By Peter-Paul Koch | July 20th, 2005

Image Previews with DOM and CSS (and a dash of PHP)

Sometimes it might be a good idea to give visitors an insight of what is lurking behind a link. Normally this is achieved via a thumbnail, but what about inline links?

By Christian Heilmann | July 20th, 2005

Accessible Alternative vs. Direct Accessibility

The progressive enhancement approach, also called the ‘accessible alternative’ approach, is indeed the most common and best-understood. It’s not the whole shooting match, though. There’s a second approach to making ECMAScript-enhanced pages accessible: direct accessibility.

By Chris Kaminski | July 19th, 2005

Presentation Slides with DOM and CSS

Eric Meyer’s S5 standards based presentation slides system is used quite a lot by webstandardismos for their presentations. My personal challenge was to come up with something that is as cool as Eric’s system, but much easier to use and more lightweight when it comes to creating your own slides.

By Christian Heilmann | July 18th, 2005

JavaScript and WCAG2.0 progress

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (or WCAG) is a series of pointers and tips on making web content accessible to people with disabilities (with a useful side-effect of making the content more accessible to practically all devices). JavaScript has a bigger profile within the current WCAG2.0 work.

By Mike Davies | July 18th, 2005

The DOM Scripting Task Force

In an effort to boost the quality of scripting on the world wide web, the Web Standards Project today announced the formation of the DOM Scripting Task Force.

By Jeremy Keith | July 18th, 2005

Practical Ajax

Cameron Adams, the antipodeon man in blue, has written a nice hands-on guide to using Ajax. The article, over on SitePoint, is called Usable Interactivity with Remote Scripting.

By Jeremy Keith | May 10th, 2005

Interview with Håkon Wium Lie

Håkon Wium Lie is the CTO of Opera Software and in 1994 proposed the idea of CSS. Håkon is as deeply involved with the Web and with CSS as anyone can possibly be. Recently, he contacted WaSP to ask whether we could host the Acid2 test, which we agreed to ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | March 31st, 2005

Keeping your Balance with ECMAScript

Paul Bellows has revisited the even-height CSS columns question discussed in a couple of previous posts. Paul's method uses ECMAScript, the DOM and some non-standard properties to work it's magic. Personally, I'm not a big fan of using ECMAScript for basic layout. Neither is Paul, truth be told. But at the ...

By Chris Kaminski | September 13th, 2004

Mozilla DOM Inspector

Old news to some no doubt, Richard Rutter reveals that the DOM Inspector built in to Mozilla can be used for, among other things, sniffing out CSS bindings. Ever been stuck looking at an element and scratching your head wondering which, exactly, of the 20 possible cascading style rules is affecting ...

By Dave Shea | May 7th, 2004

W3C Recs the DOM3 Core

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 | April 7th, 2004

Two DOM3 Modules Reach Proposed Recommendation Status

On Thursday the W3C released the DOM Level 3 Core and Load & Save modules as Proposed Recommendations. This is the final stop on the path to being a full-fledged W3C Recommendation. Both modules will be open for implementation feedback until March 5.

By Porter Glendinning | February 7th, 2004

QuirksMode

Looking for the ultimate learning resource for CSS, Javascript, and the DOM? What about a remarkably complete listing of current support levels amongst the major browsers? Even a news source devoted to Javascript? Peter Paul Koch delivers, and how. Launched just today is his brand new QuirksMode, over a hundred and ...

By Dave Shea | October 29th, 2003

DOM Support Resource

The tireless Peter-Paul Koch has updated his useful DOM Compatibility Tables. Look here to find browser support for DOM Levels 1 and 2, both Core and HTML. Includes information on the new Safari 1.0 and Opera 7 beta versions. (Hat tip: the mighty Glish.)

By Scott Andrew LePera | January 21st, 2003

The Web Standards Project is a grassroots coalition fighting for standards which ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all.

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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All of the entries posted in WaSP Buzz express the opinions of their individual authors. They do not necessarily reflect the plans or positions of the Web Standards Project as a group.

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