Web Standards Project

Company

The Web Standards Project (WaSP) was 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 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.

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.

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 Web Compatibility Test for Mobile Browsers allows mobile browsers and other rendering engines to test for web page rendering issues.