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 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 re-launched 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 (19981999) •
Jeffrey Zeldman (19992002) • Steven Champeon (20022004) •
Molly Holzschlag (20042006) • Kimberly Blessing and Drew McLellan (20062008) • Derek Featherstone, Aaron Gustafson, and Glenda Sims (20082013) There were members that were invited to work on ad hoc initiatives, the Buzz Blog 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 to promote instruction of Web standards and standards-compliant public sites. ; Microsoft Task Force: Worked with the
Internet Explorer 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 of origin or domicile." ; The Street Team: Organized community events to promote web standards. ;DOM Scripting Task Force: Focused 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,
accessibility, standards-driven
JavaScript. These best practice approaches have been called "DOM scripting" to differentiate them from earlier perceived bad uses of "
Dynamic HTML". The task force became inactive before the group disbanded. == Activities ==