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Buzz Archives for September 2004

IE: Retired or Revitalized?

C|Net has an article about the future of Internet Explorer. Much of the article is speculation fueled by vague quotes from various Microsoft employees about how wonderful web browsing in Longhorn, the next version of Windows, will be. Wade through the fluff, though, and there's a pretty good history of the ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Browsers

GoLive to Join CS 2.0

According to ThinkSecret, a revived GoLive 8.0 will join Creative Suite v2.0 to be released in early 2005. The news item reports Adobe is working to improve the handling of CSS content including a toolbar for adjusting CSS layouts.Also getting a makeover is the grid element for CSS DIV ...

By Meryl K. Evans | Filed in Authoring Tools

Min-Height Without the Min-Height

Fellow WaSP Dave Shea has cracked the nut of making min-height work in Safari. Ironically, he does it without using min-height. Well, almost: there's still a 'phantom' min-height in there to get Opera to do the right thing, but that's it. Nice work, Dave!

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Browsers, CSS, Training

Gbrowser?

The wags over at /. are speculating that Google may release a browser. Their evidence includes recent hires at Google and the fact that Google already owns the Gbrowser.com domain. Personally, I'd say this one lands somewhere between 'unlikely' and 'I'll have some of whatever you're smoking' on the bullometer, but ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Browsers

Chiefly Standards

Zeldman has announced another Happy Cog redesign. This time, they've worked their magic on the Kanas City Chiefs' site, and have supplied a before image and a discussion of the work. Too bad Zeldman & co. don't remake defenses, too. ;-)

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Web Standards (general)

The Communicatorization of IE

Remember the bad old days of 2000-2001? Back when Netscape Communicator still had appreciable market share on most sites? If you were working with CSS layouts then you probably don't; your brain has buried that period deep in your subonscious mind. It's just too painful a memory to deal with. ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Browsers

MacRabbit

MacRabbit is a new CSS editor for the Mac. I haven't had a go with it yet, but the extraction feature alone, which allows you to suck down the CSS for an arbitrary site using a custom user agent string so you can 'spoof' different browsers and circumvent browser-sniffing, looks ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Authoring Tools, CSS

Foxy Reaches Goal

Spread Firefox has reached its goal with five days to spare. Any guesses as to the number of downloads at the end of day 10? FirefoxIE has been updated to work with Firefox 1.0PR. See the release.

By Meryl K. Evans | Filed in Browsers

Down IE, Up Mozilla

Microsoft's Internet Explorer share has dropped from 95.6% in June to 93.7% this month. This is the most notable slip for IE's dominance in over seven years. Mozilla browser share has grown from 3.5% to 5.2%. The Spread Firefox campaign is on, with a promotion to encourage one million downloads in ten ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Browsers

what do swimming pool maintenance and CSS have in common?

Why John Gallant, of course. The ex-pool repair guy is now an internationally recognized CSS guy instead. You can read all about his transformation (oh, that's a bad pun) in the recent “Ten Questions for John Gallant (Big John)” from our great friends at the Web Standards Group.

By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in CSS

Z-Positioning: The Definitive Guide

Aleksandar Vacic has posted what looks to be an exceedingly thorough guide to Z-index positioning. He's a good man, and thorough. He goes throgh the effect of z-index values on both absolutely- and relatively-positioned elements in a variety of browsers. Definitely one for the bookmarks file. Update: Well, that didn't take ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in CSS

Get ‘em While They’re Hot

The Mozilla Foundation has released Firefox 1.0PR (that's 'Preview Release', or 0.10, one of the last releases before it goes 1.0), Thunderbird 0.8 and version 1.7.3 of the Mozilla Suite. Especially noteworthy in this release is rudimentary support for ATOM and RSS feeds. Neither RSS nor ATOM is a by-Hoyle web ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Browsers

Patents and Tabbing and Browsers — Oh My!

A couple emailers have pointed out that Microsoft has apparently won a patent on tab navigation of links in a browser. Theoretically, this means Microsoft could demand royalties from any company or organization whose browser allows users to find and navigate through links on a web page using the 'tab' ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Browsers

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 | Filed in Design, DOM, Web Standards (general)

Redesigns-a-go-go

More sites jumping on the CSS + structural markup bandwagon: Firtst, Happy Cog Studios has redesigned the Amnesty International USA site. Jeffrey Zeldman discusses the challenges of working with a large site on a tight budget and his experience with the dreaded 3rd party problem. He also has a more complete ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Web Standards (general)

Standards for Beginners

Fellow WaSP Dave Shea is compiling list of web design resources for beginners. This project promises to be as useful in standards evangelism as Dave's Zen Garden. I'm really looking forward to seeing what he unearths.

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Training

How We See Web Pages

The Poynter Institute has posted their EyeTrack III study, a fascinating look at how people view web pages facilitated by a technology that allowed researchers to track participants' eye movements as they surfed. Hat-tips: Dan Gillmor and Steve Reubel via Robert Scoble

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Usability

Embedding Objects the Valid Way

As part of his piece on best practices for online captioning, Joe Clark has also published a compendium of techniques for using <embed> and <object> with valid markup. This one's going in the bookmarks for sure.

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in HTML/XHTML, Validation

Online Captioning Best Practices

Joe Clark, accessibility guru and author of the excellent Building Accessible Websites, has pointed me to 'Best practices in online captioning.' It's 21 chapters based on a government-funded university project, but don't let that fool you ;-): it's by far the most comprehensive work I've seen on online captioning. I find ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Accessibility

CSS Tables

Following up on the variable-width, even-height CSS columns technique he worked out with WaSP Douglas Bowman, Eric Meyer has added a couple of posts explaining the CSS table-layout properties.

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in CSS, Training

Tantek on ‘Ten CSS Tricks’

Last week, an article on evolt called Ten CSS tricks you may not know made the rounds through the CSS blogosphere. CSS luminary and erstwhile IE 5/Mac developer Tantek Çelik is doing some peer review. A must-read, if only for information on IE/Win's support for multiple class selectors and why ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in CSS, Training

W3C Rebranding

Andrei Herasimchuk has posted an excellent logo design tutorial based on his efforts to redesign the W3C logo. Andrei undertook the exercise after Dean Jackson asked him to lend a hand with an upcoming W3C ten year anniversary event.

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Design, Training, W3C/Standards Documentation

Sliding CSS Columns

Eric Meyer and WaSP Douglas Bowman have teamed up to develop a technique for creating multiple columns of equal height and variable width using CSS. Eric's discussion also includes his thoughts on the expediency of the odd layout table, while Doug frames his explanation in a discussion of the advantages ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in CSS, Design, Training

CSS + XHTML Template Competition

WestCiv is holding a competition on developing CSS + XHTML templates for their StyleMaster web development applicaion. StyleMaster is the brain child of John Alsopp, a former WaSP CSS Samurai. Hat-tip: Jeffrey Zeldman.

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Web Standards (general)

Design in Hand

A List Apart has a nifty piece on web design for handhelds. The article was written by Opera's Jorunn D. Newth and W3C Working Group invited expert Elika Etemad. Tip o' the chapeau to Jeffrey Zeldman.

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Mobile, Training

Safari Adds XSLT Support

Somehow I missed this for nearly a month, but Dave Hyatt has added XSLT support to Apple's KHTML-based Safari browser. Dave says he's working on an ECMAScript API for document transformations, and he's also asking for test cases using xml-stylesheet, as well as general feedback on XSLT support in general.

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Browsers

Technoriffic

While I wasn't looking, Tantek Çelik, formerly a prime mover behind erstwhile CSS standard-bearer IE 5.x for Mac, has redesigned Technorati and Election Watch 2004 using structural markup and CSS. Though Tantek too has been bitten by the dreaded 3rd party problem, his markup is still a treat. Tantek gives a peek ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Web Standards (general)

Think CSS

WaSP D. L. Byron recently observed that Macworld has hopped on the CSS layout bandwagon. It's a nice design, and largely well-crafted, but is let down in the end by advertisement markup littered with FRAMEBORDER and MARGINWIDTH attributes and a mess of unencoded ampersands in various links. Looks like the ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Web Standards (general)

IEBlog Picks up the Pace

After a sluggish spell — occasioned, no doubt, by the last-mile sprint to finish XP SP2 and recovery therefrom — IEBlog has started posting some gems. Of particular interest to web developers is a post explaingin IE for Windows XP SP2's updated user agent string. Also, be sure to catch Jeff Davis' ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Browsers

Realty Redesign

WaSPs Meryl points to a slick new RE/MAX design, featuring valid XHTML and a (mostly) tableless, CSS-driven design. A few of the sub-pages need some work, but most of the problems seem to derive from external service providers over which RE/MAX has limited control. Such 3rd party problems are all too common, ...

By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Web Standards (general)

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