The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group invites implementation of two Candidate Recommendations: CSS Backgrounds and Borders Module Level 3 and CSS Multi-column Layout Module. CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, in speech, etc. The main extensions in Backgrouns and Borders over CSS 2 related to borders consisting of images, boxes with multiple backgrounds, boxes with rounded corners and boxes with shadows. Multicolumn features allow authors to flow content into multiple columns with a gap and a rule between them. Learn more about the Style Activity.

The Media Fragments Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Media Fragments URI 1.0. Audio and video resources on the World Wide Web are currently treated as "foreign" objects, which can only be embedded using a plugin that is capable of decoding and interacting with the media resource. Specific media servers are generally required to provide for server-side features such as direct access to time offsets into a video without the need to retrieve the entire resource. Support for such media fragment access varies between different media formats and inhibits standard means of dealing with such content on the Web. Media Fragments URI 1.0 provides for a media-format independent, standard means of addressing media fragments on the Web using Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI). The Working Group also updated Use cases and requirements for Media Fragments. Learn more about the Video in the Web Activity.

The Web Services Resource Access Working Group published updates to five Working Drafts: Web Services Enumeration (WS-Enumeration), Web Services Eventing (WS-Eventing), Web Services Resource Transfer (WS-RT), Web Services Transfer (WS-Transfer), and Web Services Metadata Exchange (WS-MetadataExchange). The first describes a general SOAP-based protocol for enumerating a sequence of XML elements that is suitable for traversing logs, message queues, or other linear information models. The second describes a protocol that allows Web services to subscribe to or accept subscriptions for event notification. The third defines extensions to WS-Transfer that deal primarily with fragment-based access to resources to satisfy the common requirements of WS-ResourceFramework and WS-Management. The fourth describes a general SOAP-based protocol for accessing XML representations of Web service-based resources. The fifth defines how metadata associated with a Web service endpoint can be represented as resources, how metadata can be embedded in endpoint references, and how metadata could be retrieved from a Web service endpoint. Learn more about the Web Services Activity.

The Multimodal Interaction Working Group has published a Group Note of Use Cases for Possible Future EMMA Features. Since EMMA 1.0 became a W3C Recommendation, a number of new possible use cases for the EMMA language have emerged, e.g., multimodal output, biometrics, emotion, sensor data, multi-stage dialogs and interactions with multiple users. This document describes those use cases and illustrates how the EMMA language could be extended to support them. Learn more about W3C's Multimodal Interaction Activity.

As part of work on XSLT 2.1 and XQuery 1.1, the XQuery and XSL Working Groups have published First Public Working Drafts of XQuery and XPath Data Model 1.1, XPath and XQuery Functions and Operators 1.1, XSLT and XQuery Serialization 1.1 and XPath 2.1. In addition, The XQuery Working Group has updated drafts for XQuery 1.1: An XML Query Language, XQueryX 1.1 and XQuery 1.1 Requirements. Learn more about XML at W3C.

The W3C China Office supported Webrebuild.org with their first Web Standards Event in Beijing. The theme of the event, attended by over 100 people, was "Thoughts on Web Standards" and it aimed at offering a platform for developers in Beijing to discuss and share ideas of how to make better use of Web standards and technologies. Speakers discussed browser compatibility, CSS3.0, HTML5 and ontologies. AnQi (Angel) Li from the W3C China Office gave an opening speech to welcome the attendees and introduced the W3C China Office. Learn more about upcoming W3C talks internationally.

The Protocols and Formats Working Group (PFWG) published an updated Working Draft of WAI-ARIA, the Accessible Rich Internet Applications technical specification for making dynamic, interactive Web content accessible to people with disabilities. PFWG also published Working Drafts of the WAI-ARIA User Agent Implementation Guide that provides guidance on how browsers and other user agents should expose WAI-ARIA features to platform accessibility APIs, and WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices that describes how Web content developers can develop accessible rich Web applications using WAI-ARIA. These and other WAI-ARIA documents are described in the WAI-ARIA Overview. Read the WAI-ARIA review announcement for details, and about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

The Math Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendations Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 3.0 and A MathML for CSS Profile. The former defines the Mathematical Markup Language, an XML application for describing mathematical notation and capturing both its structure and content. The goal of MathML is to enable mathematics to be served, received, and processed on the World Wide Web, just as HTML has enabled this functionality for text. The second specification describes a profile of MathML 3.0 that allows formatting with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). The group is developing a Test Suite for specifications, starting from the MathML 2.0 Test Suite. Read the disposition of last call comments for MathML 3.0 and for the CSS Profile. Learn more about the Math Activity.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of Selectors Level 3. Selectors are patterns that match against elements in a tree, and as such form one of several technologies that can be used to select nodes in an XML document. Selectors have been optimized for use with HTML and XML, and are designed to be usable in performance-critical code. See the group's implementation report and disposition of Last Call comments. Comments are welcome through 31 January 2010. Learn more about the Style Activity.

The WAI Education and Outreach Working Group today published a first collection of statistics, case studies, and articles that support the business case for web accessibility, in Resources for Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your Organization. To learn about sharing your resources, see Share Resources Supporting the Web Accessibility Business Case blog post. Read about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).