Monday, 11 July 2005

Microsoft Teams up with WaSP for Web Standards

With Web standards gaining an audience in the mainstream, Microsoft announced its collaboration with the Web Standards Project (WaSP) to develop standards-compliant products in its software line. The task force will enable Microsoft to utilize WaSP's technical guidance and resources as the company increases its focus on Web standards support.

"WaSP is very excited about working with Microsoft and offering our support, advice and assistance," said Molly E. Holzschlag, WaSP Steering Committee member and noted author and speaker. "We are impressed with the advancement in standards conformance in Visual Studio 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0 and look forward to working with Microsoft to increase standards conformance in future versions of its Web development tools and platform."

WaSP is providing open standards consultation and support on two of the software giant's Web development tools: Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and ASP.Net 2.0. Currently in beta, the code delivered by each tool allows users to create accessible documents that validate against World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards and browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla, and Opera. Although talks with Internet Explorer developers have been confirmed by WaSP members, there have been no formal announcements regarding standards compliance in IE7.