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Contact:
Chris Carrico                                         George Olsen
Urge Public Relations                             2-Lane Media
chris@urgepr.com                                  golsen@2lm.com 
213-848-8743                                         310-473-3706 x2225
  

WEB STANDARDS PROJECT FORMS "ACTION COMMITTEES" 
 TO FOCUS THE IMPACT OF THEIR INITIATIVES

LOS ANGELES, September 9, 1998 -- The Web Standards Project (WSP)
http://www.webstandards.org/, an international coalition of leading Web
developers, announced today the formation of a host of Action Committees to
further its goal of getting browser makers to fully support standards
created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Broken down into Outreach,
Publicity and Technical Action Committees, the groups will focus on
different areas while putting forth a concerted effort to move the
WSP’s objectives forward. 

Currently, compensating for the lack of consistent support for standards
adds about 25% to the cost of building a web site, which translates into
millions of dollars wasted every year, according to the WSP. The Outreach
Action Committee will develop messages aimed at groups affected by this
increased cost, including academic organizations, corporate IT departments,
and even Internet service providers, and will enlighten them as to why they
should help and what they can do.

The Publicity Action Committee will work with the Outreach Committee to get
those messages to print and electronic publications, as well as electronic
forums and trade organizations. They will also organize meetings at
industry trade shows - one is currently planned for Web98 in Boston - and
help with grassroots campaigning aimed at consumers.

In order to create the most accurate and effective messages possible, the
WSP Technical Action Committee will test currently available browsers and
development tools to determine their level of support for the W3C
recommendations. The major browser manufacturers have already claimed some
level of support for many of these standards, many of which they also
helped to create; the testing will determine how close they've actually
come, and will highlight inconsistencies or lack of support.

The committees will also concentrate on garnering broad support for
standards not yet widely implemented but with a potentially profound effect
on the future of web development, including Extensible Stylesheet Language
(XSL), as soon as that specification is approved by the W3C, and Extensible
Markup Language (XML) 1.0, which has already been approved.

The committees will not limit their activities to merely pointing out
problems, however. They will also work closely with the browser
manufacturers to move the browsers closer to compliance. As one of the
first activities to accomplish this goal, they will join other developers
and users in testing Netscape's NGlayout rendering engine. NGlayout will,
according to Netscape, be 100% compliant with Cascading Style Sheets 1
(CSS-1) and the Document Object Model (DOM) level 1, two standards vital to
the de-fragmentation of the web. Netscape has not yet decided, however,
whether it will include NGlayout in the next release of its popular
browser, Navigator.

Encouraging standards-compliant browsers does not mean stifling innovation,
the WSP emphasizes. Rather, consistent support for standards will provide
the solid base upon which innovators can build. If the Web continues to
fragment, the WSP contends, the future of the browser market and all its
innovations is as uncertain as the future of the medium itself. As stated
in the WSP mission statement, "We recognize the necessity of innovation in
a fast-paced market. However, basic support of existing W3C standards has
been sacrificed in the name of such innovation, needlessly fragmenting the
Web and helping no one." 
 


Christopher Carrico 
Urge Public Relations, Inc. 
mailto:chris@urgepr.com 
http://www.urgepr.com 
213.848.8743