Organization
The Web Standards Project began as a grassroots coalition "fighting for standards in our browsers" founded by George Olsen, Glenn Davis, and Jeffrey Zeldman in 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).
Founding members of the project moved on in 2002 but continued to evangelize web standards to design and business audiences.
The Web Standards Project is now primarily an educational organization and is currently (July 2011) led by Derek Featherstone, Aaron Gustafson, and Glenda Sims
Previous project leaders were:
- George Olsen (1998-1999)
- Jeffrey Zeldman (1999-2002)
- Steven Champeon (2002-2004)
- Molly Holzschlag (2004-2006)
- Kimberly Blessing and Drew McLellan (2006-2008)
There are members that are invited to work on ad hoc initiatives, the Buzz Blog and other content areas of the site.
Read more about this topic: Web Standards Project
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