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The Web Standards Project (WaSP) was a group of professional web developers dedicated to disseminating and encouraging the use of the
web standards Web standards are the formal, non-proprietary standards and other technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web. In recent years, the term has been more frequently associated with the trend of endorsing a set of s ...
recommended by the
World Wide Web Consortium The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working ...
, along with other groups and standards bodies. Founded in 1998, The Web Standards Project campaigned for standards that reduced the cost and complexity of development while increasing the accessibility and long-term viability of any document published on the Web. WaSP worked 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". The group disbanded in 2013.


Organization

The Web Standards Project began as a grassroots coalition "fighting for standards in our ebbrowsers" founded by George Olsen, Glenn Davis, and
Jeffrey Zeldman Jeffrey Zeldman is an American entrepreneur, web designer, author, podcaster and speaker on web design. He is the co-founder of A List Apart Magazine and the Web Standards Project. He also founded the design studios Happy Cog and studio.zeldman, ...
in August 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). The project relaunched in June 2002 with new members, a redesigned website, new site features, and a redefined mission focused on developer education and standards compliance in authoring tools as well as browsers. Project leaders were: * George Olsen (1998–1999) *
Jeffrey Zeldman Jeffrey Zeldman is an American entrepreneur, web designer, author, podcaster and speaker on web design. He is the co-founder of A List Apart Magazine and the Web Standards Project. He also founded the design studios Happy Cog and studio.zeldman, ...
(1999–2002) * Steven Champeon (2002–2004) * Molly Holzschlag (2004–2006) * Kimberly Blessing and Drew McLellan (2006–2008) * Derek Featherstone, Aaron Gustafson, and Glenda Sims (2008–2013) There were members that were invited to work on ad hoc initiatives, th
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and other content areas of the site. The group announced its dissolution on March 1, 2013.


Task forces

The Web Standards Project hosted projects focused on bringing relevant organizations closer to standards-compliance, dubbed Task Forces. ;Adobe Task Force: Focused on improving web standards compliance in products from Adobe Systems. Was named the Dreamweaver Task Force until 2008-03-10. ;Education Task Force : Worked with institutions of higher
education Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty ...
to promote instruction of Web standards and standards-compliant public sites. ; Microsoft Task Force: Worked with the
Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems ( ...
and Web platform tools team. ; Accessibility Task Force: Worked with organizations, vendors and others to promote Web accessibility. ; International Liaison Group: A member was "an active advocate for Web standards and best practices either in their
country A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. It may be a sovereign state or make up one part of a larger state. For example, the country of Japan is an independent, sovereign state, while ...
of origin or domicile." ; The Street Team: Organized community events to promote web standards. ;DOM Scripting Task Force: Focused on interoperable
client-side scripting A server-side dynamic web page is a web page whose construction is controlled by an application server processing server-side scripts. In server-side scripting, parameters determine how the assembly of every new web page proceeds, and includi ...
, through explaining and promoting the DOM standards from W3C and the
ECMAScript ECMAScript (; ES) is a JavaScript standard intended to ensure the interoperability of web pages across different browsers. It is standardized by Ecma International in the documenECMA-262 ECMAScript is commonly used for client-side scripting o ...
Standard, and concepts like
progressive enhancement Progressive enhancement is a strategy in web design that puts emphasis on web content first, allowing everyone to access the basic content and functionality of a web page, whilst users with additional browser features or faster Internet access ...
,
graceful degradation Fault tolerance is the property that enables a system to continue operating properly in the event of the failure of one or more faults within some of its components. If its operating quality decreases at all, the decrease is proportional to the ...
, accessibility, standards-driven
JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...
. These best practice approaches have been called "DOM scripting" to differentiate them from earlier perceived bad uses of "
Dynamic HTML Dynamic HTML, or DHTML, is a term which was used by some browser vendors to describe the combination of HTML, style sheets and client-side scripts (JavaScript, VBScript, or any other supported scripts) that enabled the creation of interactive ...
". The task force became inactive before the group disbanded.


Activities

* The
Acid1 Acid1, originally called the Box Acid Test, was a test page for web browsers. It was developed in October 1998 and was important in establishing baseline interoperability between early web browsers, especially for the Cascading Style Sheets 1.0 ...
test allows browsers and other rendering engines to test compliance with HTML 4 and CSS 1 specifications. * The
Acid2 Acid2 is a webpage that test web browsers' functionality in displaying aspects of HTML markup, CSS 2.1 styling, PNG images, and data URIs. The test page was released on 13 April 2005 by the Web Standards Project. The Acid2 test page will be ...
test allows browsers and other rendering engines to test compliance with CSS 1 and 2 specifications. * The
Acid3 The Acid3 test is a web test page from the Web Standards Project that checks a web browser's compliance with elements of various web standards, particularly the Document Object Model (DOM) and JavaScript. If the test is successful, the results ...
test allows browsers and other rendering engines to test compliance with CSS 2.1, DOM, and
EcmaScript ECMAScript (; ES) is a JavaScript standard intended to ensure the interoperability of web pages across different browsers. It is standardized by Ecma International in the documenECMA-262 ECMAScript is commonly used for client-side scripting o ...
specifications.


See also

*
A List Apart ''A List Apart'' is a webzine that explores the design, development, and meaning of web content, with a special focus on web standards and best practices. History ''A List Apart'' began in 1997 as a mailing list for web designers, moderated and ...
* Browse Happy *
WebPlatform WebPlatform.org (or WebPlatform) was a community-edited documentation website spun off by W3C. It sought to create a vendor-neutral online reference of Web platform standards. The project was a collaboration among Adobe Systems, Apple Inc., ...
*
CSS Zen Garden The CSS Zen Garden is a World Wide Web development resource "built to demonstrate what can be accomplished visually through CSS-based design." It launched in May 2003. Style sheets contributed by graphic designers from around the world are ...


References


External links

*
The Web Standards Project Education Task Force
* ttp://archive.webstandards.org/ Archive: The Web Standards Project's historical "goodbye" page {{Web browsers Organizations established in 1998 Organizations disestablished in 2013 Web standards Internet-related organizations Volunteer organizations