Tag Archives: DWWS

DWWS FB Group One Year Celebration!

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Today marks the one year anniversary of the day we started the Designing With Web Standards group on Facebook (DWWS). Since October 27, 2007 over 4,100 members have joined, representing over 50 countries around the globe.

Update: As of  Jan. 26, 2009 – there are over 4,800 members.

Designing With Web Standards - Facebook Group

Designing With Web Standards - Facebook Group

Quoting from the DWWS Facebook group page:

Designing With Web Standards is “the foundational web standards text”. “A core text cited by many as the beginning of the true revolution.”

“Web standards” didn’t really exist until Mr. Jeffrey Zeldman, and his colleagues, coined the term, applied it to a set of ill-enforced W3C and ECMA recommendations, and persuaded browser makers to support these core technologies accurately and completely. That was “The Web Standards Project.”

Designers still weren’t using these hard-won standards, so Mr. Zeldman pushed A List Apart in the direction of web standards evangelism, and this had a great effect. An underground of smart, forward-thinking designers and developers embraced web standards.

Still, most people didn’t get the concepts of web standards, and the industry was oblivious to the benefits or even the existence of web standards.

So the book was written, and published, revised and re-published and the story of web standards continues. It’s the book that launched a thousand other books, from Web Standards Solutions on. It changed some people’s careers, launched others, shook up the industry. However imperfectly applied, web standards are behind most “Web 2.0″ apps.

And yet web standards are still a semi-underground movement, and standardistas are still a rare breed.

Back on November 2nd, 2007 – Jeffrey Zeldman wrote about the group in his blog.

In July of 2008, we wrote an update about DWWS group activities, and related events.

In the past year, 4,171 members have to joined the DWWS Facebook group – to ask questions about the Designing With Web Standards book, and dialogue about Web Standards.

The DWWS Facebook group is already very global. Members are from the following countries, or regions: Australia, Argentina, Bangladesh, Belgium, Belize, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Finland, Fiji, France, Ghana, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Jordan, Kenya,
Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, UK, USA, Venezuela, Vietnam, etc.

Join the DWWS FB group and let’s learn about web standards together.

Just getting started with web design or web standards? Check out Jeffrey Zeldman’s DWWS page, or our recent book review of Jeffrey’s book – Designing With Web Standards.

A List Apart is Changing

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Jeffrey Zeldman says ALA is slowly changing course to reflect a maturing understanding of web standards in the marketplace.

Web standards are in our DNA and will always be a core part of our editorial focus. Standards fans, never fear. We will not abandon our post. But since late 2005, we have consciously begun steering ALA back to its earliest roots as a magazine for all people who make websites—writers, architects, strategists, researchers, and yes, even marketers and clients as well as designers and developers. This means that, along with issues that focus on new methods and subtleties of markup and layout, we will also publish issues that discuss practical and sometimes theoretical aspects of user experience design, from the implications of ubiquitous computing to keeping communities civil.

Bravo! 3 cheers for architects; 3 cheers for developers; 3 cheers for strategists.

That makes 9 cheers from people like me – an architect/developer/strategist.

What about you? Are you adjusting your web standards strategy during the browser battles of 2008? How are you maturing your business? Are your branches growing stronger, as your roots grow deeper?  Are you growing old gracefully, like the old oak tree?

CSS Gurus Help You Learn and Master CSS

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Jacob Gube at Six Revisions provides an excellent roundup of 20 websites to help you learn and master CSS.  Of course, Jeffrey Zeldman‘s A List Apart is at the top of the list.  Jacob mentions Eric Meyer (who tutored Zeldman) and CSS Zen Garden, but also highlights a few blogs (and talented writers/designers) that were not on my radar.

Afruj Jahan also rounded up some excellent websites to learn CSS.

Every standardista knows you have to learn CSS to follow web standards. Speaking of which … did you hear that the Facebook Designing With Web Standards Group is giving away a few free copies of Designing with Web Standards (DWWS), by Zeldman.  ( We reviewed the DWWS book here, and the article is one of our most popular links. )

Want more help? Try following these 9 great web developers on Twitter.

DWWS – Designing With Web Standards – Update

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You can now follow the complete thread for Designing With Web Standards using the DWWS tag, which now includes a book review, a brief history of the DWWS group on Facebook, and some background on the original Blue Beanie Day.

While we’re on the topic of Zeldman (and DWWS) you should participate in (yes, if you are a web designer, you should take the survey too!) the 2008 Survey of People Who Make Websites.