The Web Performance Working Group has published two W3C Recommendations today.

• Navigation Timing. This specification defines an interface for web applications to access timing information related to navigation and elements.
• 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.

Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (WCAG WG) today published an updated Working Draft of Guidance on Applying WCAG 2.0 to Non-Web Information and Communications Technologies (WCAG2ICT). It is a draft of an informative (that is, not normative) W3C Working Group Note that will clarify how Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 can be applied to non-Web ICT. Please see important information in the Call for Review e-mail. Comments are welcome through 15 February 2013. Read about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

The WebFonts Working Group has published a W3C Recommendation of WOFF File Format 1.0. This document specifies the WOFF font packaging format. This format was designed to provide lightweight, easy-to-implement compression of font data, suitable for use with CSS @font-face rules. Any properly licensed TrueType/OpenType/Open Font Format file can be packaged in WOFF format for Web use. User agents decode the WOFF file to restore the font data such that it will display identically to the input font. Learn more about the Fonts Activity.

The Protocols and Formats Working Group (PFWG) published a Proposed Recommendation of Role Attribute, an XML attribute that allows authors to add semantic information to documents. Role Attribute supports WAI-ARIA, the Accessible Rich Internet Applications technical specification for making dynamic, interactive web content accessible to people with disabilities. Comments are welcome through 1 February 2013. Read the Role Attribute Proposed Recommendation e-mail announcement for more information, and about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

The Web Applications Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of Selectors API Level 1. Selectors, which are widely used in CSS, are patterns that match against elements in a tree structure. The Selectors API specification defines methods for retrieving Element nodes from the DOM by matching against a group of selectors. It is often desirable to perform DOM operations on a specific set of elements in a document. These methods simplify the process of acquiring specific elements, especially compared with the more verbose techniques defined and used in the past. Comments are welcome through 25 January. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of CSS Conditional Rules Module Level 3. This module contains the features of CSS for conditional processing of parts of style sheets, conditioned on capabilities of the processor or the document the style sheet is being applied to. It includes and extends the functionality of CSS level 2, which builds on CSS level 1. The main extensions compared to level 2 are allowing nesting of certain at-rules inside ‘@media’, and the addition of the ‘@supports’ rule for conditional processing. Comments are welcome through 10 January. Learn more about the Style Activity.

The Web Application Security Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Content Security Policy 1.1. This document defines a policy language used to declare a set of content restrictions for a web resource, and a mechanism for transmitting the policy from a server to a client where the policy is enforced. Learn more about the Security Activity.

The RDFa Working Group and the HTML Working Group have published a Working Draft of HTML+RDFa 1.1. This specification defines rules and guidelines for adapting the RDFa Core 1.1 and RDFa Lite 1.1 specifications for use in HTML5 and XHTML5. The rules defined in this specification not only apply to HTML5 documents in non-XML and XML mode, but also to HTML4 and XHTML documents interpreted through the HTML5 parsing rules. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity, and the HTML Activity.

The Device APIs Working Group has published two documents today:

• A Working Draft of HTML Media Capture.The HTML Media Capture specification defines an HTML form extension that facilitates user access to a device's media capture mechanism, such as a camera, or microphone, from within a file upload control.
• A Last Call Working Draft of Ambient Light Events.This specification defines a means to receive events that correspond to a light sensor detecting the presence of a light. Comments are welcome through 26 January.

Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity.

The Audio Working Group has published two Working Drafts today:

• Web Audio API. This specification describes a high-level JavaScript API for processing and synthesizing audio in web applications. The primary paradigm is of an audio routing graph, where a number of AudioNode objects are connected together to define the overall audio rendering. The actual processing will primarily take place in the underlying implementation (typically optimized Assembly / C / C++ code), but direct JavaScript processing and synthesis is also supported.
• Audio Working Group has published a 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.

W3C today published the report of the W3C Web and Automotive Workshop: Shift into High Gear on the Web, hosted by Intel on 14-15 November 2012 in Rome, Italy, and sponsored by QNX and Webinos.

This workshop provided a way for the participants to focus on opportunities and challenges for exploiting Web technologies within the car, and what kinds of standards work may be needed to realize the potential. The Workshop participants reached a broad consensus that HTML5 is a compelling basis for automotive, and that it is now timely to launch standardization of user centric vehicle APIs in order to avoid the risk of fragmentation from competing approaches. Other aspects were identified, such as safety, network and devices integration, business and advertising.

The Workshop prioritized work on use cases and requirements, security/policy mechanisms, a user centric vehicle API and a reference model. The next steps are likely to include further outreach with the aim of launching a standards activity; W3C staff will work with stakeholders to identify opportunities for launching work in support of standards for Web and Automotive.

W3C has published a new edition of Standards for Web Applications on Mobile, an overview of the various technologies developed in W3C that increase the power of Web applications, particularly in the mobile context.

A deliverable of the webinos project, this eighth edition of the document highlights changes since August 2012, particularly the chartering of three new Working Groups on Near-Field Communications (NFC), System Applications (i.e. native apps built with Web technologies) and Pointer Events.

Learn more about the Web and Mobile Devices.

The OWL Working Group has published the Second Edition of the OWL 2 ontology language as a W3C Edited Recommendation. OWL 2, part of W3C's Semantic Web toolkit, allows people to capture knowledge about a particular application domain (e.g, energy or medicine) and then use tools to manage information, search through it, and learn more from it.

The second edition corrects several minor errors in the specification and also clarifies the relationship between OWL 2 and Datatypes defined in Part 2 of the XML Schema Definition Language (XSD) 1.1 (now a Recommendation). The standard consists of 13 documents, of which 4 are instructional.

Learn more about the Semantic Web.

The Provenance Working Group has published four Candidate Recommendation Documents along with corresponding supporting notes. You can find a complete list at the PROV Overview draft. These document provide a framework for interchanging provenance on the Web. PROV enables one to represent and interchange provenance information using widely available formats such as RDF and XML. In addition, it provides definitions for accessing provenance information, validating it, and mapping to Dublin Core.

The release of these Candidate Recommendation documents is a signal to developers that the Working Group believes that each specification is ready for implementation. Although there are already a number of implementations around, the Provenance Working Group kindly asks for developers across the Web to implement the specification and provide implementation feedback.

You can contact the group directly through the public comments mailing list. You are also encouraged to fill out one of group's surveys about your usage of PROV.

Learn more about the Semantic Web.

The Rule Interchange Format Working Group has published a set of twelve documents, advancing the Rule Interchange Format (RIF) to Proposed Edited Recommendation. The Working Group has made minor editorial improvements to its six Recommendations-track specification and its six Working Group Notes, including producing a new RIF Primer.

The Specifications are:

1. RIF Overview
2. RIF Core Dialect
3. RIF Basic Logic Dialect
4. RIF Production
5. RIF Framework for Logic Dialects
6. RIF Datatypes and Built-Ins 1.0
7. RIF RDF and OWL Compatibility
8. OWL 2 RL in RIF
9. RIF Combination with XML data
10. RIF In RDF
11. RIF Test Cases
12. RIF Primer

Learn more about the Semantic Web.

The Pointer Events Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Pointer Events. This document defines events and related interfaces for handling hardware agnostic pointer input from devices like a mouse, pen, or touchscreen. For compatibility with existing mouse-based content, this specification also describes a mapping to fire DOM Level 3 Events Mouse Events for pointer device types other than mouse. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Web Applications Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation 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. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The CSS Working Group published a Working Draft of CSS Fonts Module Level 3. This CSS3 module describes how font properties are specified and how font resources are loaded dynamically. The contents of this specification are a consolidation of content previously divided into CSS3 Fonts and CSS3 Web Fonts modules. Learn more about the Style Activity.