The Technical Architecture Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Publishing and Linking on the Web. Publishing a page on the Web is fundamentally different from printing and distributing a page in a magazine or book. This document is intended to inform future social and legal discussions of the Web by clarifying the ways in which the Web's technical facilities operate to store, publish and retrieve information, and by providing definitions for terminology as used within the Web's technical community. This document also describes the technical and operational impact that does or could result from legal constraints on publishing, linking and transformation on the Web. Comments are welcome through 13 December. Learn more about the Technical Architecture Group.

The Web Applications Working Group has published a Working Draft of File API. Web applications should have the ability to manipulate as wide as possible a range of user input, including files that a user may wish to upload to a remote server or manipulate inside a rich web application. This specification defines the basic representations for files, lists of files, errors raised by access to files, and programmatic ways to read files. Additionally, this specification also defines an interface that represents "raw data" which can be asynchronously processed on the main thread of conforming user agents. The interfaces and API defined in this specification can be used with other interfaces and APIs exposed to the Open Web Platform. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Filter Effects 1.0. Filter effects are a way of processing an element's rendering before it is displayed in the document. Typically, rendering an element via CSS or SVG can conceptually described as if the element, including its children, are drawn into a buffer (such as a raster image) and then that buffer is composited into the elements parent. Filters apply an effect before the compositing stage. Examples of such effects are blurring, changing color intensity and warping the image. Learn more about the Style Activity.

The HTML Working Group has published nine updated working drafts:

• The HTML5 specification
• HTML5: Edition for Web Authors
• HTML5 differences from HTML4
• HTML Microdata
• HTML Canvas 2D Context
• HTML5: Techniques for providing useful text alternatives
• Polyglot Markup: HTML-Compatible XHTML Documents
• HTML to Platform Accessibility APIs Implementation Guide
• HTML: The Markup Language

There is a list of the changes made to the HTML5 specification since publication of the previous HTML Working Draft (March 2012). The changes are essentially fine-tuning refinements rather than major new additions, in keeping with the progress of the specification toward greater stability, and transitioning toward an upcoming Candidate Recommendation draft.

Learn more about HTML.

The Linked Data Platform (LDP) Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Linked Data Platform 1.0. A set of best practices and simple approach for a read-write Linked Data architecture, based on HTTP access to web resources that describe their state using RDF. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

The Technical Architecture Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Best Practices for Fragment Identifiers and Media Type Definitions. Fragment identifiers (fragids) within URIs are specified as being interpreted based on the media type of a representation. Media type definitions therefore have to provide details about how fragids are interpreted for that media type. This document recommends best practices for the authors of media type definitions, for the authors of structured syntax suffix registrations (such as +xml), for the authors of specifications that define fragid structures, and for authors that publish documents that are intended to be used with fragids or who refer to fragments within documents using URIs with fragids. Comments are welcome through 13 December. Learn more about the Technical Architecture Group.

The Audio Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Web MIDI API. This specification defines an API supporting the MIDI protocol, enabling web applications to enumerate and select MIDI input and output devices on the client system and send and receive MIDI messages. It is intended to enable non-music MIDI applications as well as music ones, by providing low-level access to the MIDI devices available on the users' systems. At the same time, the Web MIDI API is not intended to become a semantic controller platform; it is designed to expose the mechanics of MIDI input and output interfaces, and the practical aspects of sending and receiving MIDI messages, without identifying what those actions might mean semantically. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Multimodal Interaction Working Group a W3C Recommendation 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. Learn more about the Multimodal Interaction Activity.

W3C announced today a Workshop on Electronic Books and the Open Web Platform, 11-12 February 2013, in New York (USA). The event is hosted by O'Reilly and collocated with the O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference (TOC 2013).Today’s eBook market is dynamic, fast-changing and strong. eBooks compete with printed versions, and there is a wide choice of hardware and software available for eBook readers. Nevertheless, publishers face major business and technical challenges in this market, some of which could be reduced or removed by standardization. Participants in this workshop will have the opportunity to share their own perspectives, requirements, and ideas to ensure that emerging global technology standards meet the needs of the eBook industry. W3C membership is not required to participate. All participants are required to submit a statement of interest by 10 December 2012.

The MultilingualWeb-LT Working Group has published a Working Draft of Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Version 2.0. This document defines data categories and their implementation as a set of elements and attributes called the Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) 2.0. ITS 2.0 is designed to foster the creation of multilingual Web content, focusing on HTML5, XML based formats in general, and to leverage localization workflows based on the XML Localization Interchange File Format (XLIFF), and language technology applications like machine translation or named entity annotation. In addition to HTML5 and XML, algorithms to convert ITS attributes to NIF is provided. Learn more about the Internationalization Activity.

The Web Performance Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of High Resolution Time. This specification defines a JavaScript interface that provides the current time in sub-millisecond resolution and such that it is not subject to system clock skew or adjustments. Comments are welcome through 20 November. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Server-Sent Events. This specification defines an API for opening an HTTP connection for receiving push notifications from a server in the form of DOM events. The API is designed such that it can be extended to work with other push notification schemes such as Push SMS. Comments are welcome through 13 November. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Government Linked Data Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of An organization ontology. This document describes a core ontology for organizational structures, aimed at supporting linked data publishing of organizational information across a number of domains. It is designed to allow domain-specific extensions to add classification of organizations and roles, as well as extensions to support neighbouring information such as organizational activities. Comments are welcome through 25 November. Learn more about the eGovernment Activity.