Name:
Jeffrey Zeldman

Age:
45

Location:
NYC

Mac or PC:
You jest, of course. Macs, Macs, and more Macs, baby.

Site(s):
http://www.zeldman.com/ (1995-2000)
Jeffrey Zeldman Presents:
Entertainment for you.

http://www.alistapart.com/ (1998-2000)
A List Apart:
Magazine and mailing list for people who make websites.

http://www.happycog.com/ (2000)
Happy Cog: Will design for money.

http://www.webstandards.org/ (1998-2000)
Web Standards Project:
Fighting for standards in our browsers.

One of your most widely publicised projects is the 'Web Standards Project' (WaSP), can you explain a little about what this is and what goals you and the other founders/members hope to achieve:
The WaSP is a coalition of designers, programmers, and web users fighting for standards in our browsers. Lack of support for standards adds at least 25% to the cost of every website, retards the progress of the web, and inevitably means that some people who want to use our sites simply can't get in.

In the two years since we began yelling at browser makers and demanding complete support for W3C standards, support for the GUI-oriented standards (CSS, HTML and JavaScript) has improved in Explorer, Mozilla, and Opera. Though none of these browsers is perfect (and Mozilla is still in beta), the need for standards has been recognized, and browser makers as well as developers are far more standards-conscious. In the next phase of the fight for standards, inconsistencies, ommissions, and bugs in the "GUI standards" will need to be addressed. Perhaps more importantly, support (or lack of support) for XML and the DOM is shaping up as the next battle royale.

Glenn Davis and George Olsen had the original vision, in 1998, to organize a group of developers and start DOING something about the browser wars and the lack of standards, instead of just lying down and taking it. I put the site together using nothing but HTML 4 and CSS-1. I mean, literally, nothing. There are almost no graphics on that site, and there's no JavaScript either. Actually, it was an interesting act of discipline, putting it together like that, and it's affected every site I've done since.

Are your members all highly active within the organisation or are they just members to show their support of the project:
We'd like them to be more active, and many of them want to be. Problem is, it *takes* an organization to *build* an organization. We are too loosely-structured, too anarchist, and also way too busy to build the kind of infrastructure that would allow all our members to *do stuff.*

So basically, at this time, most of them are there as supporters. We do have discussion groups that generate useful ideas, and we do have a couple of volunteer groups - like the CSS Samurai - that organized themselves, and were therefore able to make a huge contribution. There's an Educational Group that's been working as well, and we hope to have something from them soon.

But basically, to be honest, a lot of this works by having a few highly visible (and some less visible) members kvetch a lot - in the right places, to the right people.

What direction will WSP be taking in the future:
One thing we plan to do is work with toolmakers - Macromedia, BareBones, Allaire, Adobe, and others - to help them refine their tools so they generate valid code. Tom Negrino will be heading up that effort.

But we can't really do that (and we can't persuade them to care) until the browsers fully support standards. Netscape 6 looks like it will, but it seems like we've been waiting forever. IE5/Mac does a great job with two standards now - CSS-1 and HTML 4. Like I said, the big worries are XML and the DOM, and the main issue is whether Microsoft will allow its Windows browser to catch up with its Mac browser ..... and then go ahead and *fully* support XML and the DOM on both platforms.

At this moment we seem to be in a standoff with Microsoft. Some of their signals indicate a willingness to go forward and finish the job of supporting standards. And they obviously have the talent and knowledge to do that. Other signals indicate a desire to go their own way, which is always dangerous ... especially considering their much larger marketshare. Netscape behaved that way when they were on top. Microsoft is now making similar noises. We're hoping these disconcerting statements have more to do with corporate positioning than reality. There's always the possibility that Microsoft fully intends to completely support XML and the DOM ... but they're not willing to say so publicly, for whatever strategic, business reasons.

We had an early victory in 1998 when we helped persuade Netscape to throw out its entire browser and start over, with the standards-compliant Gecko engine. And some of us kibbitzed as Microsoft delivered IE5/Mac. But we've hit a bit of a brick wall on the Windows side. At least, for now. And of course, the delay in releasing the Netscape 6 browser based on Mozilla has drained some folks' enthusiasm for, and optimism about, that project. Opera is looking good - we hope to evaluate it properly soon - but Opera is a minority browser. Bottom line: one or two good browsers is not enough. They all have to support the same standards, and they have to do it 100%, or we'll still be in a fragmented developmental space, with our hands tied.

Once we get standards in *all* browsers, the next steps will be tools and education. (Education for designers, because we've all grown up using duct tape and chickenwire to "just make it work," and we'll have to learn new ways when the browsers finally give us what we've been demanding.)

Your personal site Zeldman.com is hugely popular having almost 4.7 million hits, why do you think this is:
Well, I wouldn't overestimate its popularity, but it does all right. For one thing, it's been around a while, and it's the nature of links to grow exponentially (or virally). Think of how Amazon grew. One guy links to you. His five friends see the site and two of them link to you. Their ten friends see those links, and so on. The longer you're around, the more that kind of momentum builds. Even if your site is terrible, if it sticks around long enough, it will get some kind of momentum.

Maybe another thing is that it's a very diverse site. Different for different people. Office workers go to laugh at the Ad Graveyard on their lunch hour, or download the celebrity interviews. For those people, it's an entertainment site. People who are trying to build their first homepage read "Ask Dr Web," or use the free graphics in "Steal These Graphics." For those folks it's a resource.

So it appeals to different audiences. Well, if you're appealing to just one audience - even if it's a HUGE audience, like "women" or "people under thirty" - at some point that group is finite. But if your work appeals to several completely different audiences, then it has a better shot at pleasing at least some of them.

It's the opposite of marketing, which targets specific groups. Or it's like multi-faceted marketing. Except that it's not marketing at all, of course. I just make stuff I like, and put it out there.

I think that should be restated. If you're trying to be popular, you will probably fail, and you will never be satisfied with the success you do manage to achieve. If you simply do work that pleases you, there's a good chance somebody else will like it, too.

But what is 4 million, anyway? I mean, if you compare zeldman.com to Yahoo, or even Slashdot, it's a pretty tiny percentage of the wired population. For a thing I make at 5 am, with no business plan and no revenue model, it's doing okay, I guess.

My first site, batmanforever.com (created with Alec Pollak, Steve McCarron, and Doug Rice) got 1.5 million visits a week, when the total online population was 3 million. Half of all web users were checking us out every week! So, basically, it's all been downhill from there. I'll never have those kinds of stats again. Nobody will. Slashdot gets 3 million visits a DAY, but there are over 200 million web users now. Drop in the bucket.

It's really about the right audience finding the work. That's how the web's supposed to be anyway. It's not a mass medium. It's a targeted medium - a galaxy of niches.