Simon Willison’s Weblog

Webdesign-L ablaze!

12th June 2002

The Webdesign-L mailing list is ablaze with a huge, rambling, flamey thread about the relaunched Web Standards project. As with so many flames it has become quite difficut to work out what is being argued over and why (an issue compounded by the emergence of sub threads on everything from US law to how to upset a Canadian). I would provide links, but the list does not maintain a web accessible archive.

Steven Champeon of WaSP has been using the thread to set a few things straight. A major point of confusion that has been resolved is that web standards does NOT mean CSS layouts. To quote Steven:

What I’m wondering is this: when did the WaSP ever say anything about tableless sites? I’ve been part of the group since the beginning, and I don’t *ever* recall us making any noise about tables. Some /members/ of the group, myself included, have certainly done so, because it’s a Good Idea, but it’s never been part of the WaSP’s mission.

One useful resource that did come out of the discussion was a link to Matthew Haughey’s excellent tutorial on writing effective mailing list emails, which pays particular attention to the best way of quoting other posts.

I’ve been running my own campaign for web standards over on the WPWM forums with relatively unimpressive results. This advocacy thing is harder than it looks.