Buzz Archives for July 2003
Getting it
Quoted in a recent ZDnet article:“[Now that Microsoft has announced the end of standalone versions of Internet Explorer,] people will think, ‘are the applications I'm writing for the browser browser-agnostic, or are they IE applications—which makes them Windows applications?’ If I want an application to run on a Linux desktop ...
By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- Some men you just can’t reach
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Bucking the trend towards browser-neutral, standards-based web development, Buy.com's new music site, BuyMusic.com, requires Internet Explorer for Windows. Browser-specific development. How quaint. Did I miss the time-warp back to 1995?
By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- Sorting it Out
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A few of articles to help put the AOL announcement into perspective: C|Net has a summary of the AOL and Mozilla Foundation announcements. The story contains a couple of factual glitches. First, the AOL-Microsoft settlement didn't guarantee AOL would use IE; it guaranteed that AOL could use IE royalty-free for the ...
By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Browsers
- Eulogizing Netscape
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Though Mozilla lives on, the Netscape-branded browser is well and truly dead (or 'in maintenance mode', as the PR wonks call it). Eulogies and opinions are popping up around the Web. Already weighing in are standards and design maven Jeffrey Zeldman, CSS Guru and Netscape evangelist Eric Meyer, tech industry pundit ...
By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Browsers
- Dead How?
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At this point news is still sketchy, but the bottom line is that AOL is dismantling Netscape and laying off or “redeploying” the Netscape engineers who were working on Mozilla. Coordination of Mozilla development will continue through the Mozilla Foundation...
By Ben Henick | Filed in Browsers
- R.I.P. Netscape
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1994 - 2003
By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Browsers
- Eric talks standards, Dave browses for bugs
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"The criticism that CSS websites have looked plain is really well deserved but the reason that CSS driven sites have looked plain to date is that the people who have created those sites have not been visual artists they haven't ...
By Ian Lloyd | Filed in Design, Web Standards (general)
- Hitting the Target
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The following, published within an advice column in several Gannett papers, was recently brought to our attention: “...90 percent of Web surfers use Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Web developers often optimize their sites to work best with it. Using Netscape may not prevent you from seeing a page, but it ...
By Ben Henick | Filed in Browsers
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)
More Buzz articles
| 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 |