Rogue Librarian

After a long beauty sleep, The Web Standards Project (WaSP) is back in business, with a larger membership, a new look and a refocused mission. The WaSP is still fighting for standards for creating and interpreting web-based content, but they are increasing their focus from browsers and authoring tools, to include the last problem: developers.

With the advent of 5.0 browsers, support for web standards in receiving devices began to take hold, thus making The WaSP’s earlier efforts a reality. The release of Dreamweaver MX demonstrated that The WaSP’s Dreamweaver task force had taken root, and that a generation of standards-compliant authoring tools was emerging.

With browsers and authoring tools more or less in the bag, The WaSP decided that the next target should be web developers. Many web developers are still creating sites built with table hacks, font tags, and other expensive and outmoded techniques. These practices were developed to cope with the proprietary rendering engines of 4.0 and earlier browsers. While the browser manufacturers have cleaned their side of the street, developers have been slow to clean theirs.

A new swarm headed by Molly E. Holzschlag and Shirley Kaiser (Learn Group co-leaders) has created an educational section on the new site that will help developers retire bad habits, and begin to author more accessible, less expensive, standards-compliant sites.

The WaSP has changed not only in its look and its focus, but in its voice. In its first iteration, WaSP had been written almost entirely by Jeffrey Zeldman, but now its regularly updated content is authored by a chorus of some of the best brains in the business.