The Media Fragments Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation 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. This specification provides for a media-format independent, standard means of addressing media fragments on the Web using Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI). The Working Group also published today the first draft of a companion document, Protocol for Media Fragments 1.0 Resolution in HTTP, which describes various recipes for processing media fragments URI when used over the HTTP protocol. Learn more about the Video in the Web Activity.

The Geolocation Working Group has published two Last Call Working Drafts: Geolocation API Specification Level 2 and DeviceOrientation Event Specification. The former defines a high-level interface to location information associated only with the device hosting the implementation, such as latitude and longitude. The API itself is agnostic of the underlying location information sources. Common sources of location information include Global Positioning System (GPS) and location inferred from network signals such as IP address, RFID, WiFi and Bluetooth MAC addresses, and GSM/CDMA cell IDs, as well as user input.

The DeviceOrientation Event Specification defines several new DOM events that provide information about the physical orientation and motion of a hosting device.

Comments are welcome on both specifications through 15 January. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity.

The Web Application Security Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Content Security Policy. This document defines Content Security Policy, a mechanism web applications can use to mitigate the broad class of content injection vulnerabilities, such as cross-site scripting (XSS). Content Security Policy is a declarative policy that lets the authors (or server administrators) of a web application restrict from where the application can load resources. Learn more about the Security Activity.

The Web and TV Interest Group published today an Interest Group Note of Requirements for Home Networking Scenarios. This document lists the design goals and requirements that potential W3C recommendations should support in order to enable access to services and content provided by home network devices on other devices, including the discovery and playback of content available to those devices, both from services such as traditional broadcast media and internet based services but also from the home network. Learn more about Web and TV.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published four Working Drafts:

• CSS Flexible Box Layout Module, which describes a CSS box model optimized for user interface design. In flexbox layout model, the children of a box are laid out either horizontally or vertically, and unused space can be assigned to a particular child or distributed among the children by assignment of "flex" to the children that should expand. Nesting of these boxes (horizontal inside vertical, or vertical inside horizontal) can be used to build layouts in two dimensions.
• CSS Template Layout Module, which contains CSS features to describe layouts at a high level, meant for tasks such as the positioning and alignment of "widgets" in a graphical user interface or the layout grid for a page or a window.
• CSS Regions Module Level 3, which allows content to flow across multiple areas called regions. The regions are not necessarily contiguous in the document order. The CSS regions module provides an advanced content flow mechanism, which can be combined with positioning schemes as defined by other CSS modules such as the Multi-Column Module or the Grid Layout Module to position the regions where content flows.
• CSS Generated Content for Paged Media Module, describes features often used in printed publications.

Learn more about the Style Activity.

W3C has published a second version of Requirements for Japanese Text Layout, which describes requirements for general Japanese layout realized with technologies like CSS, SVG, XSL-FO and eBook standards. The document is mainly based on a standard for Japanese layout, JIS X 4051, however, it also addresses areas which are not covered by JIS X 4051. This second version of the document contains a significant amount of additional information related to hanmen design, such as handling headings, placement of illustrations and tables, handling of notes and reference marks, etc. This document was developed by participants in the Japanese Layout Task Force, with input from four W3C Working Groups: CSS, Internationalization Core, SVG and XSL. A Japanese version is also available.

The Device APIs Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Battery Status API. The Battery Status API specification defines a means for web developers to programmatically determine the battery status of the hosting device. Without knowing the battery status of a device, a web developer must design the web application with an assumption of sufficient battery level for the task at hand. This means the battery of a device may exhaust faster than desired because web developers are unable to make decisions based on the battery status. Given knowledge of the battery status, web developers are able to craft web content and applications which are power-efficient, thereby leading to improved user experience. Comments are welcome through 20 December. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity.

The Patent Advisory Group (PAG) for the Web Applications Working Group has published a report recommending that W3C continue work on the Widgets Access Request Policy Specification without changes. W3C launches a PAG to resolve issues in the event a patent has been disclosed that may be essential, but is not available under the W3C Royalty-Free licensing requirements. See the original announcement of the PAG.