Web Standards Project
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| Type | Project |
|---|---|
| Industry | Web design |
| Founded | 1998 |
| Founder(s) | George Olsen |
| Key people | Jeffrey Zeldman |
| Website | www.webstandards.org |
The Web Standards Project (WaSP) is a group of professional web developers dedicated to disseminating and encouraging the use of the web standards recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium, along with other groups and standards bodies.
Founded in 1998, The Web Standards Project campaigns for standards that reduce the cost and complexity of development while increasing the accessibility and long-term viability of any document published on the Web. WaSP works with browser companies, authoring tool makers, and peers to encourage them to use these standards, since they "are carefully designed to deliver the greatest benefits to the greatest number of web users".[1]
Organization
The Web Standards Project began as a grassroots coalition "fighting for standards in our [web] browsers" founded by George Olsen, Glenn Davis, and Jeffrey Zeldman in 1998. By 2001, the group had achieved its primary goal of persuading Microsoft, Netscape, Opera, and other browser makers to accurately and completely support HTML 4.01/XHTML 1.0, CSS1, and ECMAScript. Had browser makers not been persuaded to do so, the Web would likely have fractured into pockets of incompatible content, with various websites available only to people who possessed the right browser. In addition to streamlining web development and significantly lowering its cost, support for common web standards enabled the development of the semantic web. By marking up content in semantic (X)HTML, front-end developers make a site's content more available to search engines, more accessible to people with disabilities, and more available to the world beyond the desktop (e.g. mobile).
Founding members of the project moved on in 2002 but continued to evangelize web standards to design and business audiences.
The Web Standards Project is now primarily an educational organization and is currently (July 2011) led by Derek Featherstone, Aaron Gustafson, and Glenda Sims[2]
Previous project leaders were:
- George Olsen (1998-1999)
- Jeffrey Zeldman (1999-2002)
- Steven Champeon (2002-2004)
- Molly Holzschlag (2004-2006)
- Kimberly Blessing and Drew McLellan (2006-2008)
There are members that are invited to work on ad hoc initiatives, the Buzz Blog and other content areas of the site.[2]
Task forces
The Web Standards Project also hosts projects focused on bringing relevant organizations closer to standards-compliance, dubbed Task Forces. By working with the larger organizations providing common tools to internet users, they are impacting the progress of standards adoption in the most effective way possible.
- Adobe Task Force
- Focuses on improving web standards compliance in products from Adobe Systems. Was named the Dreamweaver Task Force until 2008-03-10.[3]
- Education Task Force
- Works with institutions of higher education to promote instruction of Web standards and standards-compliant public sites.
- Microsoft Task Force
- Works with the Internet Explorer and Web platform tools team.
- Accessibility Task Force
- Works with organizations, vendors and others to promote Web accessibility.
- International Liaison Group
- A member is "an active advocate for Web standards and best practices either in their country of origin or domicile."[4]
- The Street Team
- Organizing community events to promote web standards.
The DOM Scripting task force, although still listed on WaSP's website, is not active any more.[5] Its purpose was to focus on interoperable client-side scripting, through explaining and promoting the DOM standards from W3C and the ECMAScript Standard, and concepts like progressive enhancement, graceful degradation and unobtrusive scripting.[6] These best practice approaches have been called DOM scripting to differentiate them from earlier perceived bad uses of DHTML.
Activities
- The Acid1 test allows browsers and other rendering engines to test compliance with HTML 4 and CSS 1 specifications.
- The Acid2 test allows browsers and other rendering engines to test compliance with CSS 1 and 2 specifications.
- The Acid3 test allows browsers and other rendering engines to test compliance with CSS 2.1, DOM, and EcmaScript specifications.
- The Acid4 test, to be created at a later date, will allow browsers and other rendering engines to test compliance with SVG, CSS 3, and mixed namespaces[7].
References
- ^ "WaSP: Fighting for Standards (WaSP mission statement)". Web Standards Project. 2206. http://www.webstandards.org/about/mission/. Retrieved 2008-03-10.
- ^ a b Who We Are - The Web Standards Project
- ^ Announcing the Adobe Task Force - The Web Standards Project
- ^ ILG Members - The Web Standards Project
- ^ DOM Scripting: A Web Standard - The Web Standards Project
- ^ Manifesto - The Web Standards Project
- ^ http://www.hixie.ch/tests/evil/acid/004/ Ian Hickson on Acid4
External links
- The Web Standards Project
- The Web Standards Project Education Task Force
- Archive: The Web Standards Project's baseline standards proposal
- Archive: The Web Standards Project's historical "goodbye" page
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