WaSP Street Team

Warning! This Book Could Be Hazardous to the Web!

How many outdated web design and development books are lurking in your local library, school or college, waiting to corrupt an innocent mind? Want to warn the unsuspecting of these hazardous materials while encouraging librarians to update their shelves? Join the WaSP Street Team by downloading and printing copies of these bookmarks (PDF 3.4MB). Then place these bookmarks in harmfully outdated books.

We’d love to see the bookmarks in action and hear what you have been up to - upload your photos to Flickr and add them to the WaSP Street Team Bookmarks group, tag any photos or blog posts with waspstreetteam.

Your mission,
should you decide to accept it,
will be to track down and identify
dangerously outdated web resources
and expose them as
the misleading charlatans
they truly are.

Common Crimes Against the Web:

• Using table layout (rather than CSS layout)
• Abusing (X)HTML markup (rather than using semantic markup)
• Building inaccessible sites (rather than insuring that all content and functionality are available to people with disabilities)
• Creating pages that only work in non-standards compliant browsers (rather than coding to web standards then hacking back for deviant browsers)

Caution: As much as these books need to be removed from public circulation and replaced with good books, you should never attempt to harm or destroy outdated books. Please treat these inaccurate tomes as ancient museum relics. Remember, that in addition to providing free access to knowledge, libraries are charged with maintaining history. All we are trying to accomplish here is to move these relics over to the outdated archives, you know, next to the “world is flat” and “pluto is a planet” sections.

So, what are you waiting for? Go make your mark!

Leave a comment for Make Your Mark

Your Replies

#1 On March 8th, 2008 7:17 pm WaSP Member hmkoltz replied:

Yeah! Great going group!

#2 On March 8th, 2008 9:53 pm Gloria Antonelli replied:

This is a great idea. Too many new people searching for books on web design are totally clueless about old school vs. web standards.

I have been reading almost every book that comes out on web design, CSS and Dreamweaver for many years. (Okay, it may border on addiction). It is amazing that old school techniques still make it into new books coming out on the market especially in the Dreamweaver books.

Things are much better but I think this idea will help. I will continue to preach web standards with my design students and clients. My next target audience is professional photographers’ sites.

#3 On March 9th, 2008 12:33 am Peter Gasston replied:

The problem is more insidious than we think. My wife paid a lot of money to do a web development course at a university here in London, and when she showed me some of her reference material I was shocked; the professor was teaching the use of table layouts, font tags, and everything we’ve moved away from over the last decade.

#4 On March 9th, 2008 12:57 am Sander Aarts replied:

Great idea!

Perhaps it’s good to offer the bookmarks in different languages. Here’s a Dutch translation:

WAARSCHUWING: Het web verandert snel.

Dit boek kan achterhaalde informatie bevatten.

Een Goed Boek nodig?
streetteam.webstandards.org/goodbooks

#5 On March 9th, 2008 4:52 am Patricia Davidson replied:

This is a fabulous idea! I work at a Community College. I have no idea what is in the campus library under web design. I will scout it out this coming week. I do know that the web design courses are behind in teaching the latest web technology. I did see in the course description this year that they finally touch on CSS and web standards.

#6 On March 9th, 2008 3:10 pm Yahia Chlyeh replied:

What about in other languages, like french?

#7 On March 9th, 2008 4:49 pm WaSP Member randrew replied:

We can definitely produce some in other languages if we have the translations.

If you can translate the text into another language then please email goodbooks@webstandards.org with your translation and we will set up a page with copies of the PDF for different languages. It would also be really helpful if you could let us know of any “good books” in your language, so we can recommend those too.

#8 On March 10th, 2008 10:36 am Tamlyn replied:

Excellent idea. However I would suggest including a little more information on the ‘bookmark’ to explain the situation. As it stands it looks a little bit like an opportunistic advert and may simply be discarded by readers.

Maybe something along the lines of:

Someone has left this marker here because they believe the content of this book to be out of date. Technology on the web evolves at such a rate that books can be obsolete less than a year after publishing. For an independently compiled list of recent, up-to-date books on this subject, please visit streetteam.webstandards.org/goodbooks

#9 On March 10th, 2008 2:13 pm Fyrd replied:

Great idea!

I would recommend adding a little more detailed information on each bookmark, though, as Tamlyn suggested.

Also, aside from recommending other books, it would be great if there was a single website we could refer people to to help them create webpages using web standards.

Not everyone is willing to buy a book on the subject, and if we really want more people to use these methods, the information should be made available. Does such a site exist? And if so, why doesn’t WaSP link to it anywhere?

The “Learn” pages are great at explaining why people should use standards, and what it all means, but the tutorials section seems sadly lacking.

Note that I understand all WaSP work is voluntary, but it appears to me as the project’s greatest shortcoming. Perhaps if there was a wiki that would help teach people how to start using web standards rather than outdated methods?

#10 On March 10th, 2008 6:24 pm iWantToKeepAnon replied:

As it stands it looks a little bit like an opportunistic advert and may simply be discarded by readers.

Exactly. If I ran across one of these I’d dismiss it as someone trying to pump up sales for “yet another” web design book. Well, hopefully I’d already know the book was rubbish, but I’d be skeptical when running across something like this.

I’d probably be more inclined to follow the advice if it was a w3c URL … but then again that’s cuz I’m already in the know.

#11 On March 10th, 2008 10:11 pm WaSP Member ccasciano replied:

too much information and you run into other problems:

People are probably just as likely to ignore it because its too much to read. The information we want to get across to the people picking up these books is simple - this is an old or outdated book, here’s where you find more - so why clutter it up? Besides, the message can be understood as an advertisement in any design or form it takes. In a way, it very much is. That’s what street teams do - make noise and advertise a band, event, brand, etc.

Another consideration is that it may be difficult to get that much information printed or copied well on different printers and scenarios.

#12 On March 11th, 2008 9:36 pm Gill replied:

My local College are still teaching the Business Studies students to develop web sites using Excel.

Is there sticker labelled:

Warning! This Teacher Could Be Hazardous to the Web!

#13 On March 12th, 2008 1:39 am Anna Belle replied:

I think this tactic is cute, but dubious. How much better it would be to simply contact the collection development librarian with a suggested list of books to pull and a suggested list of books to replace them with. Librarians are typically big standards supporters (talk MARC records with them), and I bet you would advance WaSP’s cause in a big way if you went at it in a professional-to-professional mode.

#14 On March 12th, 2008 10:16 pm Kat B replied:

I agree with Anna Belle. To place these labels permanently would require some sort of adhesive (eg. sticky tape, glue, etc). That would be tantamout to defacement of said book, which you acknowledge, needs to be kept for archival purposes.

It would also get you in the shit with the local library.

Much smarter to keep pulling it off the shelf and informing library staff that those books’ material is outdated. Eventually they will remove the book from public access to just get rid of you :) And the book stays whole :)

#15 On March 13th, 2008 12:53 pm holly [WaSP member] replied:

@Anna Belle,

The bookmark placing is used to not only attract the attention of the librarian and library but to attract attention to the patron and/or user of the book who finds this bookmark.

This ’street team’ approach was developed to reach an audience who otherwise may not know about web standards and become interested enough to look deeper. These same people may then reach out to others and help spread the information. The others could be coworkers, bosses, educators, and so on.

It really is time to help those beyond our reach get the message about Web Standards, this is only one way in which we can try to help.

Each bookmark has a link to a list of suggested books which cover standards and should be helpful.

Many libraries have reference personnel who are more than happy to take recommendations on new titles or suggestions of new books — maybe the patron finding this bookmark will print such a list and hand it to the library staff or suggest the link to the library staff? Others have contacted us and said they might just donate the books to the library on their own [another great idea which this bookmark project inspired].

It is our hope to help others see the importance of web standards - at all levels - not just Educational institutions, but also to the general public who may be interested in developing a web site. It would be very helpful if they had the right resources or books to guide their work.

#16 On March 13th, 2008 1:08 pm holly [WaSP member] replied:

@Kat B

These are printed paper bookmarks, nothing sticky about them. We do not support any marking or defacing of books at any library.

Eventually, can be a long time, we hope to help make some changes sooner than eventually or inspire changes on various avenues beyond our audience reach.

Several people have mailed our project, offering translations into other languages, posting pieces about updating books and the bookmark project on their own web spaces, others offered ideas about helping to replace books [such as donating copies to libraries], etc. So the bookmark project has inspired or reached people already, and we hope to inspire more.

#17 On March 17th, 2008 7:50 pm Stephen replied:

I planted bookmarks around the floor here at work, photos uploaded to the flickr group. Great idea.

#18 On March 22nd, 2008 8:02 am Amrinder Singh Sandhu replied:

Hey Guys, Great effort.

I am freelance web designer from India where people rarely know or follow web standards. I want you to guide me and help to spread the word about following web standards out here. I am planning to organize seminars to let people know about web standards. Hope you will guide and help me.

#19 On April 2nd, 2008 7:05 pm Ajeet replied:

I know CSS, but I readily use tables when I like. I know that makes me unpopular in the eyes of the powers that be, but the Internet is all about not bothering about the powers that be :)

#20 On April 3rd, 2008 5:03 pm Jeff Seager replied:

Wonderful idea.

#21 On May 6th, 2008 9:03 pm SISMAN replied:

Great idea. i know CSS but lot’s of times i use prepared :)

#22 On May 7th, 2008 12:06 pm Download replied:

great idea and effort :)

#23 On June 2nd, 2008 8:05 pm Guerrilla Marketing replied:

So, if I just read the “write stuff” then I’ll be set? ;-)

#24 On June 2nd, 2008 8:12 pm Guerrilla Marketing replied:

Also, you may find that there are some looking for creative Guerrilla Marketing techniques.

#25 On June 2nd, 2008 10:50 pm Maxx Kredit replied:

A really interesting theme. I´m searching on the internet for web design, CSS and especially Dreamweaver. So much information, but this site gave me new inspiration. Many thanks.

#26 On June 18th, 2008 11:10 am adam replied:

A really interesting theme.. for css…

#27 On June 18th, 2008 11:11 am Folding Room Dividers replied:

Try Websatnadards home page, you can see…. all online

#28 On July 3rd, 2008 12:26 pm Rosina replied:

Lucky to find you, keep on the good workk guys! Best of luck.u

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