The Association of Internet Professionals (AIP) formally endorsed the Web Standards Project (WSP), the coalition of
Web builders calling for greater industry standardisation–especially
between the leading Web browsers from Microsoft and Netscape.
AIP is the largest global association of Internet professionals, and its
endorsement is expected to lend greater strength to the campaign.
The WSP was co-founded by Glenn Davis of Project Cool. He pointed out that Web builders spend “at least 25 per cent” of their time
coping with the differences between the ways that Netscape Navigator
(and Communicator) and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer display Web
content. Between them, the two rival companies control more than 90
per cent of the total browser market.
“AIP joins the WSP as an important global association
of Web developers and designers with no particular axe to grind other
than the overwhelming sense that standards are essential to the
continued growth and use of the Web,” said Davis.
WSP hopes to convince Netscape, Microsoft, and other browser
manufacturers in the wisdom of adopting a basic set of standards,
namely: HyperText Markup Language (HTML) 4.0, Extensible Markup
Language (XML) 1.0, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS-1 and CSS-2),
and the core HTML and XML Document Object Model (DOM)
specifications of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). The list also
includes ECMAScript (the official name for the browser scripting
language called JavaScript by Netscape and JScript by Microsoft).
Founded in 1994, the AIP represents the global community of Internet
professionals.