2005-12-23: On this fifteenth birthday of the World Wide Web, W3C wishes a happy and successful 2006 to our visitors. Following through on its mission to lead the Web to its full potential, in 2005, W3C published six sets of new Web standards, opened the Indian Office, reduced Membership fees in developing countries, founded the Mobile Web Initiative, and launched eleven new groups including Rich Web Clients, Efficient XML Interchange, Rule Interchange Format and Health Care and Life Sciences. W3C thanks our Members, participants and contributors for their part in these achievements. Publications resume in January. Read About W3C. (Permalink)
2005-12-20: Position papers are due 10 February for the W3C Workshop on the Ubiquitous Web to be held 9-10 March 2006, hosted by Keio University in Tokyo, Japan. The "Ubiquitous Web" seeks to fulfill the potential of the Web for distributed applications that adapt to the user's needs, device capabilities and environmental conditions. Attendees will examine enabling technologies and consider what remains to be done to fulfill this vision. Read possible topics and about W3C Workshops. (Permalink)
2005-12-20: The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0. The draft describes how to produce Web content and Web sites intended for delivery to mobile and small-screen devices. Scope of Mobile Web Best Practices was published as a Working Group Note. Read about the W3C Mobile Web Initiative, a joint effort by authoring tool vendors, content providers, handset manufacturers, browser vendors and mobile operators. (Permalink)
2005-12-19: The Compound Document Formats Working Group has released four Last Call Working Drafts: Compound Document by Reference Framework, WICD Core 1.0, WICD Full 1.0, and WICD Mobile 1.0. Comments are welcome through 27 January. The Web Integration Compound Document (WICD, pronounced "wicked") is a device independent Compound Document profile based on XHTML, CSS and SVG. The drafts describe behavior when single documents contain multiple formats. Read about the Rich Web Clients Activity. (Permalink)
2005-12-19: The Compound Document Formats Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Compound Document Use Cases and Requirements Version 2.0. Version 1.0 requirements were published as a Working Group Note. The drafts address events across namespaces, rendering, and the user interaction model for documents that combine multiple formats. Read about the Rich Web Clients Activity. (Permalink)
2005-12-19: The XML Key Management Service (XKMS) Working Group has published Using XKMS with PGP as a Working Group Note. This informative note provides usage scenarios for XKMS when used with PGP, together with corresponding sample message exchanges. The note also points out open issues with PGP support in both the XKMS and XML-SIG specifications and proposes some potential solutions to these issues. Visit the XKMS home page. (Permalink)
2005-12-16: The CSS Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of Selectors. Designed to be usable in performance-critical code, selectors are patterns in the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) language that match to elements in HTML and XML. This specification describes the selectors in CSS1 and CSS2 and new selectors for CSS3. Comments are welcome through 16 January. Visit the CSS home page. (Permalink)
2005-12-16: The CSS Working Group has released a First Public Working Draft of the CSS3 Advanced Layout Module defining grid layout. The draft's features could be used to define visual order independent of document order, position and alignment of user interface "widgets," and page and window grids. Also published are Working Drafts of Multi-Column Layout and Cascading and Inheritance. Visit the CSS home page. (Permalink)
2005-12-15: Position papers are due 25 January for the W3C Workshop on Transparency and Usability of Web Authentication to be held 15-16 March 2006, hosted by Citigroup in New York, NY, USA. Attendees will identify steps W3C can take to improve the Web's trustworthiness and security for users. Topics include site authentication, safe Web client behavior, communication with users, infrastructures for content providers, and user agent testing. Read the press release, about W3C Workshops and more about Technology and Society. (Permalink)
2005-12-13: The XForms Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of XForms 1.1. XForms is the new generation of Web forms. Designed to refine and strengthen the XML processing platform introduced by XForms 1.0, version 1.1 embraces SOAP, facilitates XForms use in other host languages, and makes authoring easier. Visit the XForms home page. (Permalink)
2005-12-13: The World Wide Web Consortium today released Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL 2.1) as a W3C Recommendation. With SMIL (pronounced "smile"), authors create multimedia presentations and animations integrating streaming audio and video with graphics and text. Version 2.1 features include a new Mobile Profile and an Extended Mobile Profile with enhanced timing, layout and animation capabilities. "Today, W3C makes good on the promise of first class multimedia presentations for the mobile Web," said Chris Lilley (W3C). Read the press release and visit the Synchronized Multimedia home page. (Permalink)
2005-12-08: The W3C Web Services Addressing Working Group will hold an Interoperability Event on 17-18 January in Vancouver, BC Canada. Participants will test the Web Services Addressing family of W3C specifications. The group invites interested parties who have implemented Web Services Addressing 1.0: Core, SOAP Binding and/or WSDL Binding. For details and to register, please see the announcement. Visit the Web services home page. (Permalink)
2005-12-07: The Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Working Group has released a third Last Call Working Draft of the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Tiny 1.2 Specification. The draft allows reviewers to verify that their comments have been included. Comments will be accepted through 28 December. The SVG language delivers vector graphics, text, and images to the Web in XML. SVG Tiny 1.2 is a complete language specification and is implementable on devices large and small, from cellphones and PDAs to desktop and laptop computers. Visit the SVG home page.
2005-12-07: Standards for Multimodal Dialogue Context will be held 12 December at the Human Communication Research Centre, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh. Organized by the TALK and AMI IST research projects with support from W3C, the workshop will study interoperability needs for dialog context formats and dialog annotations. Dave Raggett and Henry Thompson of W3C present. Visit the Voice Browser Activity home page. (Permalink)
2005-12-07: Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel. (Permalink)
2005-12-06: Following the Workshop on Internationalizing the Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML), W3C announces new work to extend SSML to Asian and other languages and to add speaker verification. Speaker verification is "the best biometric for securing telephone transactions and communications," said Ken Rehor (Vocalocity) Chairman of the VoiceXML Forum and participant in the W3C Voice Browser Working Group. Read the press release, join W3C and visit the Voice Browser Activity home page. (Permalink)
2005-11-29: W3C
holds its semiannual Advisory Committee Meeting on 29 November - 1
December in Montréal, Québec, Canada. W3C Member organizations participate in
two days of discussions, special sessions and lightning talks on
W3C Activities. Learn How to Become a W3C Member and join W3C at the
next Advisory Committee Meeting during May 2006 in Edinburgh, Scotland,
UK. (Permalink)
2005-11-28: W3C is pleased to announce the renewal of the Quality Assurance Activity and the QA Interest Group, chaired by Karl Dubost (W3C) and Lynne Rosenthal (NIST). The main objective of the QA Interest Group (QA IG) is to provide a venue for W3C, its Membership, and the Web community to share their experiences and involvement with QA. Participation is open to W3C Members and the public. Visit the QA home page. (Permalink)
2005-11-28: The RDF Data Access Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of the SPARQL Query Language for RDF. SPARQL (pronounced "sparkle") offers developers and end users a way to write and to consume search results across a wide range of information such as personal data, social networks and metadata about digital artifacts like music and images. SPARQL also provides a means of integration over disparate sources. Visit the Semantic Web home page. (Permalink)
2005-11-23: The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Working Group has released Working Drafts of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 and HTML Techniques for WCAG 2.0 and a First Public Working Draft of Understanding WCAG 2.0. Following WCAG makes Web content more accessible to the vast majority of users, including people with disabilities and older users, using many different devices including a wide variety of assistive technology. Read about the Web Accessibility Initiative. (Permalink)
2005-11-23: The Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group has released a Working Draft of Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 incorporating Last Call comments. The guidelines are written to help developers create accessible authoring interfaces that produce accessible Web content. Resulting content can be read by a broader range of readers including those with disabilities. Read about the Web Accessibility Initiative. (Permalink)
2005-11-23: The WAI Protocols and Formats Working Group has released Inaccessibility of CAPTCHA: Alternatives to Visual Turing Tests on the Web as a Working Group Note. Requests for visual verification of a bitmapped image pose problems for those who are blind, have low vision or have a learning disability such as dyslexia. The note examines ways for systems to test for human users while preserving access for users with disabilities. Read about the Web Accessibility Initiative. (Permalink)
2005-11-22: W3C is
pleased to announce the nomination of
Daniel Dardailler, W3C Associate Chair based in Europe, as W3C liaison
to the Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
Board of Directors. Thomas Roessler will serve on the 2006 ICANN
Nominating Committee (NomCom). W3C's involvement in ICANN and in the
post-WSIS forum, soon to be
launched, should help preserve the operational stability of the
Internet and the Web in a transparent and open way while ensuring its
unfragmented growth based on contributions from the international
community. Read About W3C. (Permalink)
2005-11-22: The Internationalization Tag Set Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of the Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) and an updated Working Draft of its requirements. Organized by data categories, this set of elements and attributes supports the internationalization and localization of schemas and documents. Implementations are provided for DTDs, XML Schema and Relax NG, and for existing vocabularies like XHTML, DocBook and OpenDocument. Visit the Internationalization home page. (Permalink)
2005-11-22: W3C is pleased to announce the launch of the Semantic Web Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group (HCLSIG). Chaired by Tonya Hongsermeier (Partners HealthCare) and Eric Neumann (Unaffiliated), the group is chartered to improve collaboration, research and development, and innovation adoption in the health care and life science industries. Aiding decision-making in clinical research, Semantic Web technologies will bridge many forms of biological and medical information across institutions. Read the press release and visit the Semantic Web home page. (Permalink)
2005-11-21: The Mobile Web Initiative Device Description Working Group released a First Public Working Draft of Device Description Ecosystem, a future Working Group Note. Serving as input for the group's requirements document, this draft outlines business models and participants in the field of device descriptions, and postulates a common repository. Read about the Mobile Web Initiative. (Permalink)
2005-11-21: The Compound Document Formats Working Group has released four Working Drafts: the Compound Document by Reference Framework 1.0, WICD Core 1.0, WICD Full 1.0, and WICD Mobile 1.0. The drafts describe behavior for audio, video, images, fonts, layout, events, scripting, links and encoding when single documents contain multiple XML formats. Read about the Rich Web Clients Activity. (Permalink)
2005-11-21: W3C is pleased to launch the W3C Feed Validation Service, a free online tool open to creators of syndication feeds in formats such as RSS and Atom. Based on 'feedvalidator', and adding a SOAP Web service interface for interactive programming, the tool is useful for automatic or batch syntax checking. This service joins the existing pool of free, open source tools offered by W3C to the Web development community to help build a better World Wide Web. Learn more in the announcement. (Permalink)
2005-11-18: W3C is pleased to announce the launch of the Efficient XML Interchange Working Group. Robin Berjon (Expway) and Oliver Goldman (Adobe Systems) are Chairs. The group's objective is to define an alternative encoding of the XML Information Set that addresses the requirements identified in the work of the XML Binary Characterization Working Group, while maintaining the existing interoperability between XML specifications. The group is chartered through December 2007. Visit the XML home page. (Permalink)
2005-11-18: W3C is pleased to announce the XPointer Registry, opening XPointer scheme registration up to the public. XPointer is an extensible system for identifying regions in XML documents. XPointer provides for multiple addressing schemes but the XPointer specification reserved unprefixed scheme names to W3C. The registry adds public access and enables open and well-regulated use through the XPointer Scheme Name Registry Policy. Visit the XML home page. (Permalink)
2005-11-18: The XML Key Management Service (XKMS) Working Group has published A WSDL 1.1 description for XKMS as a Working Group Note. The group has defined a Web service to handle conventional PKI (public-key infrastructure) functions. Written for XKMS developers, this note provides a sample Web Services Description Language (WSDL) description for an XKMS service. Visit the XKMS home page. (Permalink)
2005-11-15: W3C is pleased to announce the launch of the Rich Web Client Activity for client-side Web Application development. The Web APIs Working Group chaired by Robin Berjon (Expway) will document and build standard Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) such as XMLHttpRequest, an AJAX component. The Web Application Formats Working Group chaired by Art Barstow (Nokia) will develop declarative languages for Web Applications, building on existing technologies in the marketplace where possible. The Compound Document Formats Working Group chaired by Kevin Kelly (IBM) moves to this Activity, and continues to develop a framework for combined documents as well as profiles that use existing W3C formats. Participation in these groups is open to W3C Members. (Permalink)
2005-11-15: SFC Open Research Forum (ORF) is an annual open house event of the Keio Research Institute of Shonan Fujisawa Campus, Keio University, Japan. At W3C Forum in ORF 2005 on 22 November, Tatsuya Hagino chairs, Yoshio Fukushige presents the Semantic Web, Kazuyuki Ashimura presents voice browsing, and Felix Sasaki presents internationalization. An exhibition booth and open tutorials on 22-23 November introduce the Mobile Web Initiative, XHTML 2.0, XForms, Compound Document Formats, internationalization of Web services, and Semantic Web services. The event is open to interested companies and the general public. (Permalink)
2005-11-15:
The Web on the Move was held on
15 November at the British Academy of
Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) in London, UK. MWI sponsors attended and Michael Wilson,
W3C UK and Ireland Office, was
master of ceremonies. Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director, sent a recorded
welcome address (MP3 audio). Read
the media advisory
and about the Mobile Web Initiative, a concerted
effort to make the Web interoperable and usable for users of mobile
devices. (Permalink)
2005-11-14: The Device Independence Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of Delivery Context: Interfaces (DCI) Accessing Static and Dynamic Properties. DCI provides access to device properties including capabilities, configuration, user preferences and environmental conditions such as remaining battery life, signal strength, ambient brightness, location, and display orientation. The previous version of this document was named "Dynamic Properties Framework (DPF)." Comments are welcome through 4 December. Read about the Device Independence Activity. (Permalink)
2005-11-10: W3C is pleased to announce the Policy for Authorized W3C Translations. For the first time, W3C will allow recognition of translations as "authorized" when they are developed through the process defined in this policy, which is based on transparency, community accountability, and commitment to W3C oversight. At the same time, W3C will continue its existing translation process which has produced 700 unofficial translations in 44 languages. W3C warmly thanks all the translators who have contributed their work. Translations of W3C documents are an important resource that helps Web standards reach more people worldwide. Read About W3C. (Permalink)
2005-11-10: The
W3C Indian Office is open in
Noida, India. The Office is hosted by the Centre for Development of
Advanced Computing (C-DAC
Noida). R. K. Verma is the Office Manager and the Deputy Office
Manager is Vijay Gugnani. Stéphane Boyera, Steve Bratt, Max Froumentin,
Ivan Herman and Richard Ishida are among those attending the opening
ceremonies on 10-11 November in New Delhi. W3C Offices assist with promotion efforts in
local languages, broaden W3C's geographical base, and encourage
international participation in W3C Activities. (Permalink)
2005-11-09: W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of the Web Services Choreography Description Language Version 1.0 (WS-CDL) to Candidate Recommendation. This XML-based language describes peer-to-peer collaborations between Web service participants by defining their behavior from a global viewpoint. Ordered message exchanges thus accomplish a common business goal. Comments are welcome through 31 March. Visit the Web services home page. (Permalink)
2005-11-07: W3C is pleased to announce the launch of the Rule Interchange Format (RIF) Working Group. "After years of industry and research work in rules languages, I'm pleased to see W3C Members working to develop a Web-based rules standard," said Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director. Chaired by Christian de Sainte Marie (ILOG) and Sandro Hawke (temporary co-Chair, W3C), the group is chartered through November 2007 to produce a language for the exchange of rules and their transfer between rule systems. Rules are executable pieces of declarative knowledge, important in managing complex and dynamic operations. Read the press release, about the Rule Interchange Format and visit the Semantic Web home page.
2005-11-04: The Web Services Description Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Web Services Description Language (WSDL) Version 2.0: RDF Mapping. The draft describes the WSDL 2.0 components in the Resource Description Language (RDF) and in the Web Ontology Language (OWL) so that all WSDL 2 documents can be merged with other Semantic Web data. Visit the Web services home page.
2005-11-04: The Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group released updated Working Drafts of the SKOS Core Guide and SKOS Core Vocabulary Specification. The drafts explain how to express classification schemes, thesauruses, subject heading lists, taxonomies, terminologies, glossaries and other types of controlled vocabulary in RDF. Previous SKOS work was supported by the European project SWAD-Europe. Visit the Semantic Web home page.
2005-11-04: The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of Scope of Mobile Web Best Practices. This document outlines deliverables such as guidelines for content delivery and display on mobile and small-screen devices, and identifies the goal of one Web. Read about the W3C Mobile Web Initiative, a joint effort by authoring tool vendors, content providers, handset manufacturers, browser vendors and mobile operators. (Permalink)
2005-11-03: We are pleased to launch the W3C Supporters Program. W3C welcomes payments and goods such as hardware and software to support W3C's operations. Premier, Major, and Contributing Supporters are acknowledged on the W3C Web site, and may use logos on their own sites as emblems of their support for W3C. Read About W3C and about the W3C Supporters Program. W3C wishes to thank all current W3C Supporters. (Permalink)
2005-11-03: W3C is pleased to announce eight Candidate Recommendations for XSLT, XML Query and XPath. Comments are welcome through 28 February. XSLT transforms documents into different markup or formats. Important for databases, search engines and object repositories, XML Query can perform searches, queries and joins over collections of documents. Both XSLT 2 and XQuery use XPath expressions and operate on XPath Data Model instances. Read the press release and visit the XML home page. (Permalink)
2005-11-02: W3C holds the Workshop on Internationalizing the Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) on 2-3 November hosted by IBM at the IBM China Research Lab in Beijing, China. Attendees will discuss ways to improve rendering of non-English natural languages using the SSML W3C Recommendation which generates synthetic speech and controls pronunciation, volume, pitch and rate. Read the agenda, about W3C Workshops and visit the Voice Browser Activity home page. (Permalink)
2005-11-01: The Internationalization Core Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0: Normalization to improve text manipulation on the Web. Based on the character model Fundamentals W3C Recommendation, the draft provides authors of specifications, software developers, and content developers with a common reference for text normalization and string identity matching. Visit the Internationalization home page. (Permalink)
2005-10-28: W3C is pleased to announce the launch of the XML Processing Model Working Group. Chartered through October 2007 and chaired by Norman Walsh (Sun Microsystems), the group will create a language for users to specify the order in which technologies process XML documents. The XML Pipeline Language and Pipeline Member Submissions and the XML Processing Model Workshop serve as input for this work. Participation is open to W3C Members. Visit the XML home page. (Permalink)
2005-10-28: W3C is pleased to announce the launch of the XML Schema Patterns for Databinding Working Group. Chartered through September 2007 and chaired by Paul Downey (BT), the group will specify a set of XML Schema patterns and their usage, allowing developers to access the data structure in Web services and other toolkits efficiently. The group is also chartered to build a test suite and to address versioning in coordination with the W3C TAG, Web Services Description Working Group, and XML Schema Working Group. Participation is open to W3C Members. Visit the Web services home page. (Permalink)
2005-10-27: W3C is pleased to announce the opening of the W3C Indian Office in Noida, India. The Office is hosted by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC Noida). R. K. Verma is the Office Manager and the Deputy Office Manager is Vijay Gugnani. Stéphane Boyera, Steve Bratt, Max Froumentin, Ivan Herman and Richard Ishida are among those attending the opening ceremonies on 10-11 November in New Delhi. Read the press release and about W3C Offices. (Permalink)
2005-10-25: The RDF Data Access Working Group has released a First Public Working Draft of the SPARQL Protocol for RDF Using WSDL 1.1. The draft describes the SPARQL protocol for RDF non-normatively in WSDL 1.1. It was written to gain implementation experience using existing Web services toolkits until WSDL 2.0 toolkits become widely available. The group also provides a wiki for code samples. Visit the Semantic Web home page. (Permalink)
2005-10-21: Registration is open for the Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) event on Tuesday, 15 November at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) in central London, UK. MWI sponsors will attend. The event is free and open to the public. Read the media advisory and about the Mobile Web Initiative, a concerted effort to make the Web interoperable and usable for users of mobile devices. (Permalink)
2005-10-19: The 14 October 2005 W3C Process Document is operative. Reviewed by the W3C Membership and staff and produced by the Advisory Board, the Process Document describes the structure and operations of W3C. A summary of changes from the previous version is available. Read more About W3C. (Permalink)
2005-10-17: The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0. The draft describes how to produce Web content and Web sites intended for delivery to mobile and small-screen devices. Writing for a wide audience, the group invites feedback from developers and network operators as well as Web professionals who are not technology specialists. Read about the W3C Mobile Web Initiative, a joint effort by authoring tool vendors, content providers, handset manufacturers, browser vendors and mobile operators. (Permalink)
2005-10-13: Based on discussions with the
XQuery and XSL Working Groups, the Internationalization Core Working
Group has released Working
with Time Zones as a Working Group Note. The document discusses
problems encountered when working with the date,
time, and dateTime values from XML Schema when time zone offsets are included
or omitted. It offers guidelines for working with field-based dates and
times, for working with date and time values that require a time zone,
and for comparing times. Visit the Internationalization home page. (Permalink)
2005-10-12: The HTML Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of XFrames. Replacing HTML frames, XFrames is an XML application for composing documents together in a view. Solving usability, search and security problems associated with HTML frames, XFrames are designed for content negotiation and to allow bookmarking. Comments are welcome. Read more on the HTML home page. (Permalink)
2005-10-06: The XForms Working Group has released XForms 1.0 (Second Edition) as a Proposed Edited Recommendation. The document brings the XForms 1.0 Recommendation up to date with first edition errata, and aligns the specification with implementations. Comments are welcome through 3 November. XForms is the new generation of Web forms. XForms separate presentation and content, minimize round-trips to the server, offer device independence and reduce the need for scripting. Visit the XForms home page. (Permalink)
2005-10-06: W3C is pleased to announce the CSIRO ICT Centre in Canberra hosts the W3C Australian Office effective 10 October. Ross Ackland is Office Manager. "W3C considers Australia a key to global adoption of Web technologies, and we welcome CSIRO as an Office host," said Ivan Herman, W3C Head of Offices. W3C wishes to thank DSTC in Brisbane and staff members Liz Armstrong and Hoylen Sue for hosting the previous Australian Office. Read about W3C Offices. (Permalink)
2005-10-05: Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel. (Permalink)
2005-10-05: COPRAS has published generic guidelines to help researchers integrate standardization into new and existing projects. Participants W3C, The Open Group, CEN, CENELEC and ETSI cooperate to help European research projects find their way through standardization and to increase standards awareness. COPRAS is funded under the European Union's Information Society Technologies (IST) program. (Permalink)
2005-09-29: Dan Connolly and Libby Miller of the Semantic Web Interest Group have published RDF Calendar - an application of the Resource Description Framework to iCalendar Data as an Interest Group Note. The Note is a report on the state of the art for integrating calendar data with other Semantic Web data used in social networking, syndicated content, and multimedia. Visit the Semantic Web home page.
2005-09-27: W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL 2.1) to Proposed Recommendation. Comments are welcome through 28 October. SMIL (pronounced "smile") puts animation on a time line, allows composition of multiple animations, and describes animation elements for any XML-based host language. Version 2.1 extends SMIL 2.0 and supports enhanced interactive multimedia presentations, reuse of SMIL syntax and semantics, and new mobile profiles. Visit the synchronized multimedia home page.
2005-09-16: The XML Query and XSL Working Groups have released the following Working Drafts of XML Query 1.0, XSL 2.0, XPath 2.0 and supporting documents. The goal of this release is to permit public review of changes made in response to Last Call comments. Visit the XML home page. (Permalink)
2005-09-16: The Multimodal Interaction Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of EMMA. The Extensible MultiModal Annotation language (EMMA) is a data exchange format for interaction management systems. Part of the W3C Multimodal Interaction Framework, the specification describes markup for describing user input together with annotations such as confidence scores, timestamps and input medium. Visit the Multimodal Interaction home page. (Permalink)
2005-09-15: The Compound Document Formats Working Group released the second Working Draft of Compound Document Framework 1.0 and WICD Profiles. The draft describes behavior for audio, video, images, fonts, layout, events, scripting, links and encoding when single documents contain multiple XML formats. WICD Core is a foundation for profiles based on XHTML, CSS and SVG, the WICD Mobile profile is designed for handsets, and WICD Desktop for the desktop and high-capability handhelds. Visit the Compound Document home page. (Permalink)
2005-09-14: The RDF Data Access Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of the SPARQL Protocol for RDF. The draft describes RDF data access and transmission of RDF queries from clients to processors. The protocol is compatible with the SPARQL query language (pronounced "sparkle") and is designed to convey queries from other RDF query languages as well. Comments are welcome through 14 October. Visit the Semantic Web home page. (Permalink)
2005-09-14: The Quality Assurance (QA) Working Group has published Test Metadata as a Working Group Note. Developed on the W3C QA wiki, this set of metadata elements can be used to track and filter tests, to identify what is tested, to construct a test harness and to format test results. Dublin Core is reused where appropriate. Visit the QA home page. (Permalink)
2005-09-14: The Internationalization Core Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Web Services Internationalization (WS-I18N). The draft enhances SOAP messaging for locale and international preference negotiation and defines a locale policy. Without using Accept-Language and user identity, implementations can handle the requester's locale, locale policy and language preference. Visit the Internationalization home page. (Permalink)
2005-09-12: The Evaluation and Repair Tools Working Group has released a Working Draft of the Evaluation and Report Language (EARL) 1.0 Schema. EARL is a flexible format used to exchange, combine and compare test results including bug reports, test suite evaluations and conformance claims. The test subjects might be Web sites, authoring tools, user agents or other entities. The group welcomes feedback from Web developers and researchers. Read about the Web Accessibility Initiative. (Permalink)
2005-09-12: W3C holds the Workshop on Internationalizing the Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) on 2-3 November in Beijing, China. Attendees will discuss ways to improve rendering of non-English natural languages using the SSML W3C Recommendation which generates synthetic speech and controls pronunciation, volume, pitch and rate. Position papers are due 23 September. Read about W3C Workshops and visit the Voice Browser Activity home page. (Permalink)
2005-09-09: The World Wide Web Consortium
today released xml:id Version
1.0 as a W3C Recommendation. The specification defines an attribute
name, xml:id, that can always be treated as an identifier
and hence can always be recognized, without fetching external
resources, and without relying on an internal subset. The
Recommendation is the latest deliverable of the XML Core Working Group, part of the W3C
XML Activity. (Permalink)
2005-09-06: The Quality Assurance (QA) Working Group has published an update to The QA Handbook Working Group Note. Written for W3C Working Group Chairs and Team Contacts, the document records group experiences and provides techniques, tools, and templates. Focused on testability and test topics, it is designed to facilitate and accelerate the work of W3C Working Groups. Visit the QA home page. (Permalink)
2005-09-02: The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Scope of Mobile Web Best Practices. This document outlines deliverables such as guidelines for content delivery and display on mobile and small-screen devices, sets out requirements for the "mobileOK" trustmark, and identifies the goal of one Web. Read about the W3C Mobile Web Initiative, a joint effort by authoring tool vendors, content providers, handset manufacturers, browser vendors and mobile operators. (Permalink)
2005-08-31: The Quality Assurance (QA) Working Group has published Variability in Specifications as a Working Group Note. A companion to the QA Specification Guidelines W3C Recommendation, the note contains advanced specification design considerations and conformance-related techniques. It describes how design of a specification's conformance model affects implementability and interoperability. Visit the QA home page. (Permalink)
2005-08-29: Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel. (Permalink)
2005-08-23: Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel. (Permalink)
2005-08-23: The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG) has published "Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your Organization." The 5-page resource suite describes social, technical, financial, legal and policy aspects of Web accessibility. It is designed to help organizations develop their own customized business case for Web accessibility. It provides text that can be used as is, as well as guidance on identifying the most relevant factors for a specific organization. Visit the WAI home page for more information on making the Web accessible to people with disabilities. (Permalink)
2005-08-23: The 28th Internationalization & Unicode Conference will be held 7-9 September in Orlando, Florida, USA. Team members Richard Ishida and Felix Sasaki will present several papers at this premier technical conference for software and Web internationalization. Read about Unicode and the W3C Internationalization Activity. (Permalink)
2005-08-22: W3C has written to the US Copyright Office regarding a notice of proposed rulemaking. The notice asks if persons filing electronic-only preregistration forms will experience difficulties if the Office requires them to use Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser. W3C comments to the Copyright Office suggest that requiring a single browser is inappropriate for government services and encourages the Office to pursue standards-based access in accordance with US Federal policy. Read W3C's letter and About W3C. (Permalink)
2005-08-17: The Web Services Description Working Group has published Discussion of Alternative Schema Languages and Type System Support in WSDL 2.0 as a Working Group Note. The note discusses WSDL 2.0 type system extensibility, defines the use of XML Schema 1.0 as a type system in the WSDL 2.0 core specification, and includes the basics of extensions for DTDs and Relax NG. Read about Web services. (Permalink)
2005-08-17: W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of Web Services Addressing - Core and its SOAP Binding to Candidate Recommendation. The core specification defines properties that allow uniform addressing of Web services and messages, independent of the underlying transport. The binding defines the core properties' association to SOAP messages. Visit the Web services home page. (Permalink)
2005-08-17: The World Wide Web Consortium today released Specification Guidelines as a W3C Recommendation. Written for editors of W3C technical reports, the guidelines explain how to define and specify conformance. The Quality Assurance (QA) Working Group has completed its work and will close. The QA Interest Group will continue W3C's four-year QA effort through mailing lists and online tools. "QA's products will be integral resources that ensure the work of W3C's Working Groups is of high quality," said Steve Bratt, W3C Chief Operating Officer. Read the press release and visit the QA home page. (Permalink)
2005-08-15: The Scalable Vector Graphics
(SVG) Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of SVG's XML Binding Language (sXBL). The
sXBL language defines the presentation and interactive behavior of
elements outside the SVG namespace. The group welcomes comments and
seeks feedback on the includes attribute. Visit the
SVG home page. (Permalink)
2005-08-11: The XML Query Working Group and the XSL Working Group are pleased to release the XML Query Test Suite (XQTS). The groups invite W3C Members and the public to run this suite of approximately 7,000 test cases with any or all of the over 20 implementations of the XML Query draft specification. Your feedback will help the Working Groups judge the implementability of the XML Query language, help to improve interoperability, and help XML Query advance on the W3C Recommendation Track. Contributions of additional test cases are invited. Visit the XML home page. (Permalink)
2005-08-09: Position papers are due 23 September for the W3C Workshop on Internationalizing the Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) to be held 2-3 November in Beijing, China. Attendees will discuss ways to improve rendering of non-English natural languages using the SSML W3C Recommendation which generates synthetic speech and controls pronunciation, volume, pitch and rate. Read about W3C Workshops and visit the Voice Browser Activity home page. (Permalink)
2005-08-09: The Compound Document Formats
Working Group has released the third Working Draft of Compound Document by Reference Use
Cases and Requirements Version 1.0. A compound document combines
multiple formats, such as XHTML, SVG, XForms, MathML and SMIL. This
draft introduces compounding by a reference like img,
object, link, src and XLink.
Compounding by inclusion is planned for a later phase. Visit the
Compound Document home page. (Permalink)
2005-08-09: The Compound Document Formats Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Compound Document Framework 1.0 and WICD Profiles. The draft describes behavior for audio, video, images, fonts, layout, events, scripting, links and encoding when single documents contain multiple XML formats. WICD Core is a foundation for profiles based on XHTML, CSS and SVG, the WICD Mobile profile is designed for handsets, and WICD Desktop for the desktop and high-capability handhelds. Visit the Compound Document home page. (Permalink)
2005-08-05: The Internationalization GEO (Guidelines, Education & Outreach) Working Group publishes information to help people understand and use international aspects of W3C technologies. In the past month, the group published Using Character Entities and NCRs, Using <select> to Link to Localized Content and Ruby Markup and Styling, as well as numerous updates and translations. For details and I18n news and RSS feeds, visit the Internationalization home page. (Permalink)
2005-08-05: Responses are due 25 August for the Device Description Technologies Survey sponsored by the Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) Device Description Working Group. This survey is open to the public (please see the procedure). Your input will help the Working Group create technical reports to advance the MWI goal of content adaptation. Read about the Device Description Working Group and the Mobile Web Initiative. (Permalink)
2005-08-05: The Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Internationalization and Localization Markup Requirements. Addressing the main challenges and issues of internationalizing and localizing XML documents, the draft outlines requirements for vocabulary, guidelines and mechanisms to meet the needs of content authors, developers and the localization community. Visit the Internationalization home page. (Permalink)
2005-08-03: The Web Services Description Working Group has published Last Call Working Drafts of the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) Version 2.0: the Primer, Part 1: Core Language, Part 2: Adjuncts and the SOAP 1.1 Binding. An XML language, WSDL describes network services and is used to document distributed systems and automate communication between applications. Comments are welcome through 19 September. Read about Web services. (Permalink)
2005-08-02: The RDF Data Access Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of the SPARQL Query Results XML Format. The SPARQL query language (pronounced "sparkle") offers developers and end users a way to write and to consume search results across a wide range of information such as personal data, social networks and metadata about digital artifacts like music and images. SPARQL also provides a means of integration over disparate sources. Comments are welcome through 1 September. Visit the Semantic Web home page. (Permalink)
2005-07-28: The CSS Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of CSS3 Values and Units. The draft explains specified, computed, and actual values and defines common values and units in one specification which can be referred to by other CSS3 modules. Visit the CSS home page. (Permalink)
2005-07-28: The XSL Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of the Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Version 1.1. Version 1.1 updates and enhances the XSL 1.0 Recommendation for change marks, indexes, multiple flows, and bookmarks, and extends support for graphics scaling, markers, and page numbers. Comments are invited through 16 September. Read about the XML Activity. (Permalink)
2005-07-21: The RDF Data Access Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of the SPARQL Query Language for RDF. Comments are welcome through 1 September. SPARQL (pronounced "sparkle") offers developers and end users a way to write and to consume search results across a wide range of information such as personal data, social networks and metadata about digital artifacts like music and images. SPARQL also provides a means of integration over disparate sources. Visit the Semantic Web home page. (Permalink)
2005-07-18: The W3C Office in Germany and Austria is pleased to present W3C-Tag 2005 - Das Mobile Web (W3C Day) on 14 September in Berlin, Germany. The event is organized jointly with Berliner XML-Tage at Humboldt University. W3C Day focuses on mobile Web and W3C's Mobile Web Initiative (MWI). Speakers include Philipp Hoschka (W3C) and Dr. Simone Emmelius (ZDF). The event is free and open to the public. Registration with Berliner XML-Tage is required. (Permalink)
2005-07-14: The W3C Spanish Office is pleased to present Shawn Henry, Jakob Nielsen, Steven Pemberton, Inmaculada Placencia, John Slatin, and Jeffrey Zeldman at Web Foundations 2005 on 22-23 November in Gijón, Spain. These noted accessibility, usability and Web standards experts will discuss Design for All as an essential requirement for equitable Internet access. Steven Pemberton also gives an XForms and XHTML tutorial on 24 November in Oviedo. The deadline for discount registration fees is 1 November. The event is open to the public. (Permalink)
2005-07-12: W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of xml:id Version 1.0 to Proposed Recommendation. The specification introduces a predefined attribute name that can always be treated as an ID and hence can always be recognized. Comments are invited through 26 August. Visit the XML home page. (Permalink)
2005-07-11: The Evaluation and Repair Tools Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of Requirements for the Evaluation and Report Language (EARL) 1.0. EARL expresses test results in a vendor-neutral and platform-independent format and is used to exchange test results between Web accessibility evaluation tools. EARL also provides a reusable vocabulary for Web quality assurance and validation. Read about the Web Accessibility Initiative. (Permalink)
2005-07-07: The XML Core Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of XML Linking Language (XLink) Version 1.1. Comments are welcome through 26 August. The XLink 1.1 language allows elements to be inserted into XML documents in order to create and describe links between resources. It uses XML syntax to create structures that can describe links similar to the simple unidirectional hyperlinks of today's HTML, as well as more sophisticated links. Visit the XML home page. (Permalink)
2005-07-05: The P3P Specification Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of the Platform for Privacy Preferences 1.1 (P3P 1.1). P3P simplifies and automates the process of reading Web site privacy policies, promoting trust and confidence in the Web. Version 1.1 has new extension and binding mechanisms based on suggestions from W3C workshops and the privacy community. The draft also includes all errata for P3P 1.0. Read about privacy and P3P. (Permalink)
2005-07-05: The Voice Browser Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of State Chart XML (SCXML): State Machine Notation for Control Abstraction 1.0. SCXML is an execution environment based on UML Harel State Tables and CCXML. SCXML is a candidate for the control language within VoiceXML 3.0, CCXML 2.0, and the authoring language under development by the Multimodal Interaction Working Group. Visit the voice browser home page. (Permalink)
2005-07-05: W3C is pleased to announce the opening of the
W3C Indian Office in Noida,
India, hosted by the Centre for
Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC). R.K. Verma is Office
Manager and Vijay Gugnani is Deputy Manager. The opening ceremony is
planned for 10-11 November. W3C
Offices assist with promotion efforts in local languages, broaden
W3C's geographical base, and encourage international participation in
W3C Activities. (Permalink)
2005-07-01: W3C is pleased to welcome the Founding Sponsors of the Mobile Web Initiative: Afilias, Bango.net, Drutt Corporation, Ericsson, France Telecom, HP, Jataayu Software, MobileAware, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Opera Software, TIM Italia, Segala M Test, Sevenval, RuleSpace, Vodafone and Volantis. W3C MWI is a concerted effort to make the Web interoperable and usable for users of mobile devices. Read about MWI and how to sponsor MWI. (Permalink)
2005-07-01: Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel. (Permalink)
2005-06-30: The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0. The Working Group invites comments on the number of conformance levels, how to address validity, and the resolution of previously raised issues. Following WCAG makes Web content more accessible to the vast majority of users, including people with disabilities and older users, using many different devices including a wide variety of assistive technology. Read about the Web Accessibility Initiative. (Permalink)
2005-06-30: The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Working Group has released First Public Working Drafts of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 Checklist in both table and linear formats. Serving as an appendix to and quick reference for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, the checklists give all success criteria and their levels, linked to WCAG 2.0 for more information. Read about the Web Accessibility Initiative. (Permalink)
2005-06-30: The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Working Group has released four updated Working Drafts of techniques for WCAG 2.0: Client-side Scripting, CSS, General and HTML. The drafts give guidance on using ECMAScript, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), HTML and XHTML to create accessible Web content. The Working Group invites comments, especially on the general techniques. Read about the Web Accessibility Initiative. (Permalink)
2005-06-29: Addressing comments and implementation issues, the Voice Browser Working Group has published a third Last Call Working Draft of Voice Browser Call Control: CCXML Version 1.0. CCXML, the Call Control eXtensible Markup Language, provides telephony call control support for VoiceXML and other dialog systems. Comments are welcome through 29 July. Visit the voice browser home page. (Permalink)
2005-06-29: W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of QA Framework: Specification Guidelines to Proposed Recommendation. Designed to help make technical reports easy to interpret without ambiguity, the guidelines explain how to define and specify conformance and how a specification might allow variation. Published as an updated Working Draft, Variability in Specifications contains advanced design considerations and conformance-related techniques. Visit the QA home page. (Permalink)
2005-06-28: The World Wide Web Consortium today released the XML Key Management Specification (XKMS 2.0) and its Bindings as a W3C Recommendation. An open, standards-based interface for key management, XKMS makes PKI practical to implement in Web applications including Web services. With XKMS, enterprises can share public key identity across applications, systems and trust boundaries. Read the press release and testimonials and visit the XKMS home page. (Permalink)
2005-06-27:: The CSS Working Group has released a Working Draft of the CSS3 Text Effects Module. The draft addresses white space, line breaks, word boundaries, text wrapping, alignment, justification and spacing. With the upcoming module "Text Layout," it replaces and obsoletes the May 2003 Text Module. Visit the CSS home page. (Permalink)
2005-06-20: W3C holds the Workshop on XML Schema 1.0 User Experiences on 21-22 June at the Oracle Conference Center in Redwood Shores, CA, USA. Diverse communities, from XML Schema end users to vendors and the W3C XML Schema Working Group, will share implementation stories and expertise. The Workshop goal is to create a plan of action addressing XML Schema 1.0 interoperability, errata and clarifications. Read the program and about W3C Workshops. (Permalink)
2005-06-20: The Voice Browser Working Group has released Authorizing Read Access to XML Content Using the <?access-control?> Processing Instruction 1.0 as a Working Group Note for information only. This note describes a mechanism being used in the industry that allows a content provider to use a processing instruction embedded within XML content to specify the access policy of that content. Implementors should perform their own security analysis. Visit the Voice Browser home page. (Permalink)
2005-06-14: The CSS Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 revision 1 (CSS 2.1). CSS 2.1 is derived from and is intended to replace CSS2. A snapshot of CSS language usage, the specification adds a few highly requested features, fixes errata and brings CSS2 in line with implementations. Comments are welcome through 15 July. Visit the CSS home page. (Permalink)
2005-06-13: W3C is pleased to announce the
advancement of Voice
Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) 2.1 to Candidate
Recommendation. Fully backwards-compatible with VoiceXML 2.0, the document
standardizes eight additional features implemented by VoiceXML
platforms: data, disconnect,
grammar, foreach, mark,
property, script, and transfer.
Comments are welcome through 11 July. Visit the voice
browser home page. (Permalink)
2005-06-09: The W3C Workshop on Frameworks for Semantics in Web Services is 9-10 June in Innsbruck, Austria, hosted by DERI and supported by EC's IST programme WS2 project. Over sixty organizations are presenting papers identifying areas of shared interest between Web services and Semantic Web communities. Topics include background technologies, registries, taxonomies, search mechanisms, ontologies for Web services, Web services choreography, and business process. Read the press release, the program and about W3C Workshops. (Permalink)
2005-06-07: The report on the W3C Rule Languages Workshop is now available. Over eighty representatives from various vendors, user communities, and research groups attended and reported on their views, experience, and ideas on options for establishing a standard web-based language for expressing rules. More information is available from the Workshop Web site and the press release. (Permalink)
2005-06-06: W3C
holds its semiannual Advisory Committee Meeting on 5-7 June in
Mandelieu, France. W3C Member
organizations participate in two days of discussions, special
sessions and lightning talks on W3C
Activities. Learn How to Become a W3C
Member and join W3C at the next Advisory Committee Meeting on 29
November - 1 December in Montréal, Québec, Canada. (Permalink)
2005-06-05: Addressing comments from the previous Last Call, the XML Query Working Group and the XSL Working Group released three updated requirements documents and a Last Call Working Draft for the XQuery and XPath languages. Important for databases, search engines and object repositories, XML Query can perform searches, queries and joins over collections of documents. XPath is used to select parts of XML documents. Visit the XML home page. (Permalink)
2005-06-01: Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel. (Permalink)
2005-06-01: The RDF Data Access Working Group has released a second Working Draft of the SPARQL Protocol for RDF. The draft describes RDF data access and transmission of RDF queries from clients to processors. The protocol is compatible with the SPARQL query language (pronounced "sparkle") and is designed to convey queries from other RDF query languages as well. Visit the Semantic Web home page. (Permalink)
2005-06-01: The RDF Data Access Working Group has released a second Working Draft of the SPARQL Query Results XML Format. The SPARQL query language (pronounced "sparkle") offers developers and end users a way to write and to consume search results across a wide range of information such as personal data, social networks and metadata about digital artifacts like music and images. SPARQL also provides a means of integration over disparate sources. Visit the Semantic Web home page. (Permalink)
2005-05-31: The World Wide Web Consortium marks the ten
year anniversary of its European presence with a celebration on 3 June
at CERAM
in the Sophia Antipolis Science Park, France. The program includes "How
it All Started at CERN," "The Web as Unifying Force in Europe,"
"Policies Shaping the Web in Europe," discussion, a press briefing and
reception. Read the media advisory and more
about W3C10 Europe.
2005-05-27: The HTML Working Group has released the seventh public Working Draft of XHTML 2.0. A modularized language without presentation elements, XHTML 2 takes HTML back to its roots in document structuring. See the introduction for the differences between XHTML versions 1 and 2. Much of XHTML 2 works in existing browsers. The draft includes an implementation in RELAX NG with DTD and XML Schema implementations to follow. Visit the HTML home page.
2005-05-26: The Voice Browser Working
Group has released SSML
1.0 say-as attribute values as a Working Group Note. The note
provides definitions for the interpret-as,
format, and detail attributes that cover many
of the most common uses for the say-as element in the
Speech Synthesis Markup Language.
Visit the Voice Browser home page.
2005-05-19: The Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment (SWBPD) Working Group has released Representing Specified Values in OWL: "value partitions" and "value sets" as a Working Group Note. Produced by the Ontology Engineering and Patterns Task Force, the note describes two methods for representing descriptive features in the OWL Web Ontology Language: partitions of classes and enumerations of individuals. Visit the Semantic Web home page.
2005-05-16: W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL 2.1) to Candidate Recommendation. Comments are welcome through 15 June. SMIL (pronounced "smile") puts animation on a time line, allows composition of multiple animations, and describes animation elements for any XML-based host language. Version 2.1 extends SMIL 2.0 and supports enhanced interactive multimedia presentations, reuse of SMIL syntax and semantics, and new mobile profiles. Visit the