Buzz Archives for May 2005
What’s that object, again?
A while ago, we asked the W3C: how do we go about including multimedia objects in Web documents in a backwards-compatible way? In the first of a two-part issue, the W3C gave us a little history lesson about the birth of multimedia inclusion in HTML documents. Now, in this long-awaited ...
By Steph Troeth | Filed in WaSP Asks the W3C
- Capgemini Goes Valid
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Valid, CSS-based redesigns have become almost routine around here, but now and again we see standards making their way into a quarter they haven't previously reached. So it is with the new Capgemini site. While large international consultancies are long on the expertise and experience needed to help megacorps, they're also ...
By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- Ten Questions for Joe
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Ten Questions for Joe Clark is the latest (May 12, 2005) interview offering by The Web Standards Group. Joe Clark talks about fonts, "more" links, opening new windows, skip links, source order, titles, accessible PDFs, forms, data tables and more. In April, the group interviewed Jason Santa Maria on a variety of ...
By Holly Marie Koltz | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- Practical Ajax
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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 | Filed in DOM, DOM Scripting TF
- CSS Reboot 2005
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May 1st. To be remembered for... Elvis Presley and Pricilla's wedding anniversary? (1967) Last British concert by Beatles? (1966) The first Batman comic published? (1939) Well yes, but also for the first CSS Reboot 2005. CSS Reboot will attempt to bring together web professionals who design with CSS and standards in mind to launch their ...
By Andy Clarke | Filed in Design
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 |