Looking Back, Looking Forward: A Conversation with Jeffrey Zeldman

n recent recent survey 43% of the audience had not heard of web standards. Of the 21% who had 5% felt they were no longer important. 20 years after the publishing of the book Web Design 2.0 — I felt it was important to highlight why web standards were so important in 2001, and why they may be even more important today.

Standards enable us to turn on lights, plug-in products, and talk across networks. Lack of standards is why we have to buy an adapter at the airport when we go to Europe and why the US still uses the antiquated system of feet, inches, and yards. Maintaining standards across the globe is no small feat.

One of the contributors to the first edition of our book was Jeffrey Zeldman. He wrote two pages on the topic of web standards. Jeffrey cofounded The Web Standards Project (WaSP) in 1999. The goal as he specifically stated was to “write it once and publish it everywhere.” This resonated with what Tim Berners-Lee stated 30 years ago when the Internet was born. He wanted to create content that everyone could see.

Read the interview here, and listen to the full sound cloud recording here.