The Web Standards Project

The Web Standards Project is a grassroots coalition fighting for standards which ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all. Thanks to the hard work of countless WaSP members and supporters (like you), Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of the web as an open, accessible, and universal community is largely the reality. When The Web Standards Project (WaSP) formed in 1998, the web was the battleground in an ever-escalating war between two browser makers-Netscape and Microsoft-who were each taking turns “advancing” HTML to the point of collapse. You see, in an effort to one-up each other, the two browsers introduced new elements and new ways of manipulating web documents; this escalated to the point where their respective 4.0 versions were largely incompatible. Realizing that this fragmentation would inevitably drive up the cost of building websites and ran the risk of denying users access to content and services they needed, Glenn Davis, George Olsen, and Jeffrey Zeldman co-founded WaSP and rallied an amazing group of web designers and developers to help them push back.

The WaSP’s primary goal was getting browser makers to support the standards set forth by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). In 2001, with the browser wars largely over, WaSP began to shift its focus. While some members continued to work with browser vendors on improving their standards support, others began working closely with software makers like Macromedia to improve the quality of code being authored in tools such as Dreamweaver. And others began the hard slog of educating web designers and developers about the importance of using web standards, culminating in the creation of WaSP InterAct, a web curriculum framework which is now overseen by the W3C. Thanks to the hard work of countless WaSP members and supporters (like you), Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of the web as an open, accessible, and universal community is largely the reality. While there is still work to be done, the sting of the WaSP is no longer necessary.

And so it is time for us to close down The Web Standards Project. Many (if not all) of us are continuing to work in the world of web standards, but our work is now largely outside the umbrella of WaSP. A List Apart - The magazine “for people who make websites” is run by WaSP founder Jeffrey Zeldman and is a consistent source of forward-thinking articles and tutorials. HTML5 Doctor - A solid resource and discussion forum on all things HTML5, brought to you by Bruce Lawson and his team. W3C Community Groups - If you have a passion for a specific web technology, you can help make it better by participating in one (or more) community groups. In particular, you might be interested in one of these: Core Mobile Web Platform, Responsive Images, Web Education, and Web Media Text Tracks. Chris Mills, Doug Schepers, and a number of other standards advocates are involved in this project. Web Standards Sherpa - An educational resource founded by WaSP which continues to operate under the leadership of Chris Casciano, Virginia DeBolt, Aaron Gustafson, and Emily Lewis. Small Business - An outreach project started by WaSP that educates small businesses about why they should care about web standards. This project is overseen by Aaron Gustafson. The job’s not over, but instead of being the work of a small activist group, it’s a job for tens of thousands of developers who care about ensuring that the web remains a free, open, interoperable, and accessible competitor to native apps and closed eco-systems. It’s your job now, and we look forward to working with you, and wish you much success. Bruce Lawson and Steph Troeth contributed to this post.

Copyright © 2010 W3C® (MIT, ERCIM, Keio), All Rights Reserved. W3C liability, trademark and document use rules apply. This specification defines an API for storing data in databases that can be queried using a variant of SQL. Beware. This specification is no longer in active maintenance and the Web Applications Working Group does not intend to maintain it further. This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. This document is the 18 November 2010 Working Group Note of Web SQL Database. Publication as a Working Group Note does not imply endorsement by the W3C Membership. This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than work in progress. The W3C Web Applications Working Group is the W3C working group responsible for this document.

This document was on the W3C Recommendation track but specification work has stopped. The specification reached an impasse: all interested implementors have used the same SQL backend (Sqlite), but we need multiple independent implementations to proceed along a standardisation path. The Web Applications Working Group continues work on two other storage-related specifications: Web Storage and Indexed Database API. Implementors should be aware that this specification is not stable. Implementors who are not taking part in the discussions are likely to find the specification changing out from under them in incompatible ways. Vendors interested in implementing this specification should join the aforementioned mailing lists and take part in the discussions. All feedback is welcome. The latest stable version of the editor's draft of this specification is always available on the W3C CVS server. This specification is automatically generated from the corresponding section in the HTML5 specification's source document, as hosted in the WHATWG Subversion repository.