Blue beanie day

Ten years ago, the Browser Wars raged. The new millennium tried to start fresh but it was actually the medieval period of web coding: nested table layout, spacer gifs, presentational markup and other atrocities.

Then there was Zeldman.

Jeffrey Zeldman was one of the early preachers in the world of web standards, and still is. He has blogged since 1995, started A List Apart and co-founded WaSP. But perhaps his most well-known contribution was authoring the book Designing With Web Standards, first published in 2003.

Zeldman’s classic book.

The cover is easily recognized with Zeldman wearing a blue beanie. This excellent book was a new beginning for a lot of web developers, introducing them to web standards.

Today the Blue Beanie Day is being celebrated around the world, a tribute to the epic cover. Thousands of standardistas are urged to wear a Blue Beanie to show their support for a semantic and accessible web. Have a look at the Flickr pool.

I admit the idea is a bit silly, but hey – at least you wear something for the cold.