How Did I Get Here? Browser Upgrade Campaign
How did I get here?
The folks who built the site you were trying to visit have directed you to this page because your browser does not support accepted web standards. Or you may have followed a link to this page in order to learn more about upgrading your browser.
Note to spam recipients: If you are visiting this page as a result of an unsolicited email message we apologize. We have never sent any unsolicited bulk mail, and in fact only rarely do we use any email address in the webstandards.org domain. More commonly, our members reply to mail sent to webstandards.org email addresses using their own, private, email accounts. If you receive unsolicited mail claiming to be from this domain, the sender is almost certainly forged. Read more about why The WaSP Hates Spam and Viruses.
Note to site builders: The WaSP Browser Upgrade Campaign has come to a close. As such we ask that you discontinue your use of this upgrade message and visit the Beyond the Browser Upgrade Campaign page to learn about what to do instead.
Note to visitors redirected from other sites: if you are not where you think you should be, please contact the webmaster of the site you just tried to reach, and let them know your opinions on the matter. Please also ask them to cease the use of the Browser Upgrade Campaign redirect, as it will no longer serve the intended purpose.
What “web standards?”
The ones created by the World Wide Web Consortium – the people who invented the Web itself. The W3C created these standards so the Web would work better for everyone. New browsers, mainly, support these standards; old browsers, mainly, don’t.
What can I do?
Your choice of software may be out of your hands. However, if you do have control over what software you are using you should consider upgrading your browser. Doing so will improve your web experience, enabling you to use and view sites as their creators intended.
The following browsers support numerous web standards including CSS, XHTML, and the DOM (a universal means of controlling the behavior of web pages):
- Netscape v7 or higher (all platforms), Mozilla Firefox (Windows or Mac OS X), Galeon (Linux GNOME Desktop) or other browser stemming from the Mozilla.org project.
- Opera v7 or higher (Windows, Linux)
- Apple’s Safari (Mac OS X)
- Konqueror (Linux KDE Desktop)
- Microsoft Internet Explorer v6 or higher (Windows) or v5 or higher (Macintosh)
Please note that this page does not pretend to be an exhaustive list of browsers that support web standards, nor a test of browser compliance, nor a side-by-side comparison of various manufacturers’ browsers.
The Web Standards Project is a grassroots coalition fighting for standards which ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all.
Recent Buzz
EduTF Report Highlights Curriculum Project
By Holly Marie Koltz | May 16th, 2008
The WaSP Education Task Force (EduTF) report updates our activity, announces new members, and offers a report on a Web standards based Curriculum Project.
In the past year, the EduTF has been quieter than previous years. We have gone through a few changes, though our mission remains the same.
The WaSP Education Task Force was created in 2005 to work directly with institutions of higher education to help raise awareness of Web standards and accessibility among instructors, administrators, and Web development teams.
Our mission is not a small one. Our work and message needs to reach beyond our reading audience and the Web standards community in order to get information, help, and resources to more people. EduTF is discussing and looking at a variety of ways in which we can help.
To help with our mission, EduTF has added new members, including: Aarron Walter, Gareth Rushgrove, Lars Gunther, Jeffrey Brown, Kathy Keller, Christopher Schmitt, and Virginia DeBolt. Each member has experience with education and a strong passion for improving education in the area of Web standards and technologies.
One task the EduTF has been working on is the publication of the EduTF Survey results. We are reviewing the final draft of the publication and hope to share this information very soon.
The survey results have been very helpful in highlighting key needs, challenges and issues within the educational community and these will be addressed by the EduTF and also through our Curriculum Project.
The Curriculum Project will be a resource that could be used by those in education, as well as, anyone needing to update knowledge on Web related technologies.
Aarron Walter is leading our Curriculum Project and has this informative report to share:
The quality of Web design and development education in our schools is perhaps the most significant barrier preventing the world-wide adoption of Web standards. The EduTF has been hard at work this year developing a curriculum to address this issue. Our goal is to create a curriculum that is modular allowing courses to be selectively integrated into existing programs that need updating, or adopted entirely to serve as the foundation for new Web design and development programs in colleges, universities, and high schools around the world.
This is a big project. We’ve sought guidance from talented educators already teaching standards, and top industry professionals who have helped us identify the tools and topics each course should include. The EduTF is teaming up with Chris Mills of Opera who is leading an initiative to create a broad series of detailed articles that teach basic principles of front end development. These articles will be integrated into a number of courses to provide educators and students with practical references and a solid foundation in Web standards.
The curriculum will be released in stages, the first of which will include a core set of courses that address foundation topics such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, accessibility, information architecture, usability, and the history of the Web. In subsequent releases, courses will be added that address more advanced topics, and specific tools popular in the industry.
Each course will contain a collection of tools for educators including:
- A course overview
- Recommended course dependencies indicating what students will need to know before beginning each course
- Learning competencies describing what students must master in order to receive a passing grade
- Assignment recommendations and test questions that allow educators to measure a student’s mastery of each competency
- Recommended readings from Chris Mills’ article series on Web standards and other reputable sources
We hope to release the curriculum in March of 2009 in an online format that will make it easy for educators to access and contribute back to the project. We view it as a living system which will be greatly enhanced by community contributions.
It’s a very big undertaking, but one that we believe could make a significant impact not only on the quality of Web design and development education offered in our schools, but also on the adoption rate of Web standards. If you’re an educator with pedagogical materials or ideas to share, please join the mailing list and our IRC channel to become part of the conversation. We welcome your support and inputs as we proceed with the development of the WaSP Web standards curriculum.
Filed in Action, Education TF, Web Standards (general), Education, Outreach, General | Comments (4)