The Web has rapidly evolved into a platform suitable for rich applications, but off-line use has remained one of the key missing elements that application developers require. To strengthen support for offline Web apps in the Open Web Platform, W3C is organizing a Workshop on the Future of Offline Web Applications on 5 November, hosted by Vodafone in Redwood City, CA. The Workshop is open to all at no cost, space permitting. Participants must submit a position paper by 30 September 2011. Learn more about the Workshop.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Working Draft of CSS Image Values and Replaced Content Module Level 3. This CSS Image Values and Replaced Content module has two parts: First, it defines the syntax for image values in CSS. Second, it defines properties used to control the interaction of replaced content and the CSS layout algorithms. These properties can affect the used image resolution for bitmaps, the replaced object's orientation, and whether and how to preserve the object's aspect ratio. Learn more about the Style Activity.

Modern Web Applications may be governed by numerous security policies. Because there is no standard and shared mechanism for declaring and enforcing policies, it is not possible for sites to selectively declare the need to escape from some restrictions or to request enforcement of additional restrictions. W3C today launched the new Web Application Security Working Group, with a mission is to address security issues in modern web applications and mash-ups. The group will define lightweight policy expression mechanisms to tune the browser security model. The group will take up work based on the Content Security Policy specification, and will work on secure mash-up technologies including Cross-Domain Resource Sharing and UMP. W3C also launched today the Web Security Interest Group, a forum for discussions on improving standards and implementations to advance the security of the Web. Learn more about W3C's Security Activity.

The Web Applications Working Group has published Last Call Working Drafts of Web Storage and Web Workers. The former defines an API for persistent data storage of key-value pair data in Web clients. The latter defines an API that allows Web application authors to spawn background workers running scripts in parallel to their main page. This allows for thread-like operation with message-passing as the coordination mechanism. Comments are welcome through 27 September. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Multimodal Interaction Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces. This document describes a loosely coupled architecture for multimodal user interfaces, which allows for co-resident and distributed implementations, and focuses on the role of markup and scripting, and the use of well defined interfaces between its constituents. Comments are welcome through 27 September. Learn more about the Multimodal Interaction Activity.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Working Draft of CSS Values and Units Module Level 3. This CSS3 module describes the various values and units that CSS properties accept. Also, it describes how values are computed from "specified" through "computed" and "used" into "actual" values. The main purpose of this module is to define common values and units in one specification which can be referred to by other modules. Learn more about the Style Activity.

Today W3C and JTC1, a joint technical committee of ISO and IEC, announced formal approval of a package of W3C Web Services technologies as ISO/IEC International Standards. As ISO/IEC JTC 1 Standards, these widely deployed technologies now benefit from formal recognition from national bodies, which will promote interoperability and reduce market fragmentation, thus benefiting all users. "This is good news for ensuring that people can use the Web anywhere, on any device," said Jeff Jaffe, W3C CEO. The package included eight specifications, including SOAP 1.2, MTOM, Addressing 1.0 and Policy 1.5, which are foundation specifications for message-based service technology that has been adopted by industry worldwide. Read the full press release and testimonials, and learn more about W3C's PAS Submitter status in the W3C PAS FAQ.