Web Devout is a website dedicated to promoting the health of the Web. This is done by providing web developers and the public with the knowledge and tools needed to help the Web move forward.
This site and most of its content were created by David Hammond, a 38-year-old web developer and standards expert from California whose works have been featured in five web design books to date. Web Devout was designed as a public service and no money has been made on its contents.
FAQ.
Web Devout resources were featured in the following books:
Published June 16, 2005 by Eyrolles, this French language CSS design book by Raphaël Goetter features a translated version of the Web browser standards support resource as an appendix.
Published August 17, 2006 by O'Reilly, the fifth edition of this popular JavaScript guide by David Flanagan includes a reference to the Web browser standards support resource.
This site by David Hammond is similar to quirksmode.org, but its compatibility tables are more comprehensive and (at the time of this writing) somewhat more up-to-date. In addition to DOM compatibility, it also rates browser compliance with HTML, CSS, and ECMAScript standards.
Published August 21, 2006 by Eyrolles, this French language beginning CSS and HTML design book by Francis Draillard features a translated version of the Web browser standards support resource as an appendix.
Published August 30, 2006 by Micro Application, this French language CSS learning guide by Fabien Basmaison, Antoine Cailliau, and Jean-Rémy Duboc features a translated version of the CSS 2.1 information in the Web browser CSS support resource.
Published September, 2007 by Apogeo, this Italian language accessibility guide by Michele Diodati references the Web browser standards support summary resource. The book will also have a cost-free HTML version available.
Internet Explorer is dangerous, The first article for what later became Web Devout, was written February 15, 2005 and was hosted on the author's personal website. The article was written in response to Microsoft's near abandonment of its web browser and the growing problems faced by end users and web developers as a result. Although Microsoft has since begun developing Internet Explorer again, their slow progress and unwillingness to significantly improve their security response efforts gives the article continuing purpose.
An automatic user agent detection and redirection system was made for this article. It has since been used by a number websites, some accounting for a large portion of this site's incoming traffic.
The Web browser security summary resource was later spun off from this article and expanded.
The first public draft of the Web browser standards support resource was published. The resource was written for two reasons: the author personally wanted an up-to-date and detailed standards support reference for his own web development work, and he wanted a way for people to easily visualize the relative progress of each browser and encourage positive movement in web browsers and users' choices of web browsers.
Initially, the page was more or less a compilation of data taken from various other similar resources along with some corrections here and there, but it quickly grew to warrant multiple pages and thorough testing of all information.
The first version of the General Meta Data Profile was published. It defines a basic set of common HTML meta data types and link types that can be referenced in the profile attribute of the head element, in accordance with the HTML 4.01 specification.
The French book CSS 2 - Pratique du Design Web by Raphaël Goetter was published with a translated copy of the Web browser standards support resource as an appendix. At the time, the resource was much smaller than it is now.
The My site doesn't work in x browser article was published in response to pages of nearly identical discussions on various web design support forums involving invalid webpages that don't work in alternative browsers.
David Flanagan, author of the popular JavaScript: The Definitive Guide published by O'Reilly, notified this site of plans to reference the Web browser standards support resource in the upcoming fifth edition of the book.
Beware of XHTML was published to explain the common pitfalls of XHTML and why HTML is still the better choice for most websites.
Firefox Myths was published in response to a deliberately misleading and libelous article of the same name. It attempted to address some common false claims about Mozilla Firefox in a fair and balanced manner.
The Doctype switching resource was published.
The name "Web Devout" was picked for this site and a mission statement was outlined.
Web Devout was relicensed with a Creative Commons license allowing for free derivative works.
The Specification lookup tool was created.
The Webpage test tool was created.
Web Devout was moved to www.webdevout.net.
www.webdevout.com was made to automatically redirect to the .net domain.
The Visitor statistics system was created.
Web Devout Tidings, the site's weblog, was created to announce new material on the site and to discuss factors influencing the health of the Web.
Opera myths was published as the Opera version of Firefox myths.
Internet Explorer myths was published as the Internet Explorer version of the "myths" articles.
Belgian author Antoine Cailliau contacted the site arranging to feature the Web browser standards support resource in his upcoming book.
French author Francis Draillard contacted the site arranging to include the Web browser standards support resource as an appendix in his upcoming book "Premiers pas en CSS et HTML".
JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, Fifth Edition by David Flanagan was published, containing a reference to the Web browser standards support resource.
The French book Premiers pas en CSS et HTML (First steps in CSS and HTML) by Francis Draillard was published with a translated copy of the Web browser standards support resource as an appendix.
The French book CSS: Le Guide Complet (CSS: The Complete Guide) by Fabien Basmaison, Antoine Cailliau, and Jean-Remy Duboc was published with a translated copy of the CSS 2.1 information in the Web browser CSS support resource.
CSS hacks was published, describing many known CSS hacks and weighing their potential consequences.
The first draft of Common issues in web design was published, providing solutions to problems commonly encountered in web design.
The URLs article was published, describing the syntax of URLs with examples and extra notes.
About Web Devout was published with a timeline of the site.
The Escaping style and script data article was published, explaining how to cater to legacy user agents and achieve maximum HTML/XHTML compatibility for inline style and script data.
Web Devout was redesigned, giving it a sleek touch-up while maintaining the original basic layout.
The Contact page was published, providing a simple contact form and information about other methods to contact the Web Devout administration.
The FAQ page was published, answering some frequently asked questions about Web Devout.
The Web development tools article was published. This article describes a collection of useful third party tools for web developers.
Web Devout gained a native search engine to help navigate the site.
The General Meta Data Profile 1.4 was published, defining a number of commonly used meta data types and link types beyond those defined in the HTML standard.
The General Meta Data Profile 1.5 was published.
The Validity and Well-Formedness article was published, explaining the distinctions between valid and well-formed XHTML.
The HTML Good Practice Checker was released, allowing developers to easily spot common violations of good practice markup rules.
The Validate XHTML Parsed as HTML tool was released, allowing developers to easily see the validation errors when their XHTML is parsed as HTML as all major browsers commonly do.
This site collects various nonpersonal statistical data about visitors' usage of the site in order to better focus development and track global usage trends on this website. Some of this information is collected through Google Analytics (see Google's privacy policy) for users with JavaScript enabled in their browsers. Other information is collected from the HTTP server logs to provide the results in the Visitor statistics page. Personally identifiable data will never be made publicly available or sold to third parties.
Some areas of this site ask for an e-mail address for feedback or account registration purposes. This e-mail address will never be publicly displayed without your express consent and it will never be sold to third parties.
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The Web Devout servers are located in the state of California in the United States of America, and are subject to the respective laws of that region.