The Web Standards Project (WaSP) relaunched itself this week with
the new goal of educating Web developers about the benefits of
building sites that incorporate standards, saying that many
developers are still using "old school methods" that block millions
of potential visitors to their sites.
The project, which was founded in 1998 by a coalition of Web
designers and developers fighting for Web standards, said that Web
developers' failure to employ standards has resulted in lost
revenue, ill will and potential litigation from groups demanding
accessibility.
Along with unveiling the new initiative, the group also announced a
relaunch of its Web site, which had been offline since the
beginning of this year.
The relaunch comes after the group saw the successful conclusion of
a lobbying effort to get browser makers to employ standards that
allow them to access most Web sites. WaSP first began by waging
what it called the "browser upgrade campaign", which mobilised
users to pressure major browser makers to employ Web standards that
would enable them to access more sites.
According to WaSP group leader Jeffrey Zeldman, makers of major
browsers such as Internet Explorer, Opera and Netscape responded to
this public pressure by including more standards in their 6.0
versions.
"These results were, at least, partially brought about by public
pressure from our campaign," said Zeldman.
The project has also set its sights on endorsing standards
compliance and accessibility in professional design tools.
According to the group, accessibility is crucial if site owners
want to avoid losing customers and, as an extension, revenue.
The group is endorsing structural language standards such as XHTML
1.0 and XML 1.0 and presentation languages such as Cascading Style
Sheets (CSS) 1, 2 and 3, Zeldman said.
Although Web standards seem prevalent, many developers who were
trained in the 1990s do not use them since standards were difficult
to employ at the time, according to Zeldman.
WaSP has begun a learning section on its site which, it hopes, will
help developers come up to speed with Web standards. Additionally,
the group is working with companies such as Macromedia, which makes
the Dreamweaver Web authoring tool, to encourage Web design product
makers to push developers to use standards as well.