The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of CSS Color Module Level 3. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a language for describing the rendering of HTML and XML documents in a variety of ways, including on screen and paper. CSS uses color-related properties and values to color the text, backgrounds, borders, and other parts of elements in a document. This specification describes color values and properties for foreground color and group opacity. These include properties and values from CSS level 2 and new values. Comments are welcome through 25 November. Learn more about the Style Activity.

The RDB2RDF Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of R2RML: RDB to RDF Mapping Language. R2RML is a language for describing how to put relational data on the Semantic Web. With R2RML, people express customized mappings from relational databases to RDF datasets, allowing them to view existing relational data in the RDF data model, expressed in their preferred structure and target vocabulary. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

The XML Core Working Group has revised the W3C Recommendation of Associating Style Sheets with XML documents 1.0 (Second Edition). This document allows style sheets to be associated with an XML document by including one or more processing instructions with a target of xml-stylesheet in the document's prolog. The second edition incorporates all known errata as of the publication date, clarifies several areas left unspecified in the earlier edition, and has been restructured to allow other specifications to reuse the rules for parsing pseudo-attributes from a string. See the full list of changes. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity.

W3C invites people to a W3C meetup in Lyon, France on Thursday, 4 November (7-9pm) at the Lyon Convention Center. Anyone may attend the meetup at no cost. We encourage Web developers and designers to join these discussions, and to meet and chat with others in the W3C community who are convening that week during W3C's TPAC 2010. The evening will include a few speakers and demos on topics such as HTML5, SVG, augmented reality and the Web, W3C's new Unicorn validator, and more. W3C appreciates the support of sponsor Grand Lyon as well as other local partners. Please register online and meet us there.

The Web Performance Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Navigation Timing. To address the need for complete information on user experience, this document introduces the NavigationTiming interfaces. This interface allows JavaScript mechanisms to provide complete client-side latency measurements within applications. With the proposed interface, it will be possible, for instance, to measure a user's perceived page load time. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The SOAP-JMS Binding Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of SOAP over Java Message Service 1.0. This document specifies how SOAP binds to a messaging system that supports the Java Message Service (JMS). Bindings are specified for both SOAP 1.1 and SOAP 1.2 using the SOAP 1.2 Protocol Binding Framework. This specification also describes how to use WSDL documents to indicate and control the use of this binding. Comments are welcome through 19 November. Learn more about the Web Services Activity.

The RDFa Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of RDFa Core 1.1. RDFa Core is a specification for attributes to express structured data in any markup language, with an emphasis on HTML-family languages, the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Format, the Open Document Format and other Web-enabled document formats. The specification enables the human-readable and machine-readable markup of people, places, events, products, recipes, social networks, and many other concepts that are frequently published on the web. RDFa 1.1 improves upon RDFa 1.0 by adding a number of features requested by people to ease authoring. The announcement as a Last Call Working Draft is an open invitation to the general public to review and provide feedback on the specification via the RDFa Working Group mailing list. The deadline for review feedback is 6 December. Learn more about the Semantic Web.

The Web Applications Working Group published three specifications today, including a first draft of File API: Directories and System, which defines an API to navigate file system hierarchies, and defines a means by which a user agent may expose sandboxed sections of a user's local filesystem to Web Applications. The API builds on the other two updated specifications, File API: Writer and File API. The Working Group also updated the Widget Requirements. A widget is an interactive single purpose application for displaying and/or updating local data or data on the Web, packaged in a way to allow a single download and installation on a user's machine or mobile device. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

W3C today retired Guidelines for Web Content Transformation Proxies 1.0. This document had been expected to become a W3C Recommendation. W3C published the document as a Candidate Recommendation in June. Since then, the Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has not gathered sufficient evidence of implementation and W3C has therefore decided to discontinue work on this document.

The HTML Working Group published eight documents:

• Working Drafts of the HTML5 specification, the accompanying explanatory document HTML5 differences from HTML4, and the related non-normative reference HTML: The Markup Language.
• Working Drafts of the specifications HTML+RDFa 1.1 and HTML Microdata, which define mechanisms for embedding machine-readable data in HTML documents, and the specification HTML Canvas 2D Context, which defines a 2D immediate-mode graphics API for use with the HTML5 <canvas> element.
• HTML5: Techniques for providing useful text alternatives, which is intended to help authors provide useful text alternatives for images in HTML documents.
• Polyglot Markup: HTML-Compatible XHTML Documents, which is intended to help authors produce XHTML documents that are also compatible with non-XML HTML syntax and parsing rules.

Learn more about HTML5.