Category: Web

Molly Miriam Esther Holzschlag (1963–2023) died on this day one year ago.

Even if you don’t know who Molly was, without doubt you have benefited from her work, her expertise and her unrelenting dedication to ensure that the world wide web that we know and love today was built on open and accessible standards, adhered to by the major web browser developers.

Her obituary in the Tucson Sentinel reported that “more than once, she challenged [then Microsoft boss] Bill Gates face-to-face to fix problems with Internet Explorer”.

Molly was nicknamed the “Fairy Godmother of the Web” and for good reason. Aside from her work as a lecturer and advocate for open standards, she wrote or co-authored 35 books on web design and open standards, including The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web with Dave Shea and Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design with Andy Clarke.

I don’t remember when I first became aware of Molly’s work, but I guess it was in the early 2000s through .net magazine, to which I subscribed. She was then firmly on my radar as I navigated my transition from church work to web work at the University of St Andrews.

During my final years as the web architect at St Andrews, in the digital communications team, I managed to get one of our sprints, which were being named after influential women, named in her honour.

I sent Molly a message on Twitter about it. She was touched and we kept in touch.

I also made initial enquiries about how to get Molly rewarded with an honourary doctorate from St Andrews, Scotland’s oldest university, in recognition of the extraordinary work she had done through the years. But, sadly, I left the University before I got much further than the preliminary steps and then my personal spectacularly fell apart.

It was during what would turn out to be Molly’s last few years that I got to know her a little better. Although I sadly never got to meet her in person, I did spot her at a distance at the www2006 conference in Edinburgh and we communicated on Twitter. One of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t follow through with a request from Molly for us to connect on a video chat. She was going through a lot with the death of her husband and her own health concerns (for which the web community raised around USD $70,000 for medical treatment), and I was going through my own daily nightmares.

Something that I really admired in Molly was her authenticity, her raw humanity—something that comes across in much of her writing and throughout her work. She fought for web standards, she fought so that people of varying abilities had no (or fewer) barriers to access this extraordinary global resource, the world wide web.

I remember the “browser wars” of the mid-2000s. Having to write different code for different browsers to make them work. Molly Holzschlag helped to eradicate that in favour of web standards—write the code once so that it runs everywhere.

Molly often wore her heart on her sleeve very publically as she railed against the cruelty of humanity, the unfairness of disease and personal loss. She went through more than anyone should be expected to endure. But she did it with authenticity and passion.

It was to these tweets that I would often respond with love and gentleness.

And throughout her personal trials, there were moments when she still embodied the strapline on her Twitter account, “It is the true teacher who leaves the class knowing they have learned the most.”

After Musk bought and started stripping the soul from Twitter, I dropped off the platform for almost a year. When I returned, earlier this year, I went to look for Molly to see how she was doing. Which is when I learned the sad news that she had been found dead at home in Tucson, Arizona on Tuesday 5 September 2023, aged 60 years.

I felt both a deep sadness that Molly had died, but in some way also a relief that her suffering has come to an end. I will miss our wee chats.

The world and the world wide web is a poorer place for Molly Holzschlag’s death. But what a legacy she has left!

May her memory be a blessing.

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Here is Molly’s obituary in the Tucson Sentinel.

And I found a number of loving tributes to this larger-than-llife internet personality, tireless and generous educator and loyal friend:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Holzschlag
• https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2023/09/06/memories-of-molly
• https://brucelawson.co.uk/2023/goodbye-molly-holzschlag/

In Memory of Molly E. Holzschlag, the Fairy Godmother of the Web