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Tim Berners-Lee, Marc Andreessen, Vinton Cerf, Robert Kahn, and Louis Pouzin Awarded 2013 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering

18 March 2013 | Archive

Tim Berners-Lee The Royal Academy of Engineering announced today that Tim Berners-Lee, Marc Andreessen, Vinton Cerf, Robert Kahn, and Louis Pouzin are the recipients of the new Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, which recognizes "outstanding advances in engineering that have changed the world and benefited humanity." The award is shared by Berners-Lee for his invention of the Web, Andreessen for his work on the Mosaic browser, and Pouzin, Cerf, and Kahn for their pioneering work on fundamental Internet protocols.

"The prize recognises what has been a roller-coaster ride of wonderful international collaboration," said Berners-Lee. "Bob and Vint’s work on building the internet was re-enforced by Louis’ work on datagrams and that enabled me to invent the Web. Marc’s determined and perceptive work built on these platforms a product which became widely deployed across nations and computing platforms. I am honoured to receive this accolade and humbled to share it with them. I want the Web to inspire and empower new generations of engineers --boys and, especially, girls-- who will build, in turn, their own platforms, to improve our global society. I hope the message behind this award, along with the work we are doing with the World Wide Web Foundation and W3C, will assist in achieving the vision of a web that is open, accessible and of value to all."

Learn more about how the Web is expanding into a full-fledged programming environment for rich applications, documents, and data: the Open Web Platform.

CSS Paged Media Module Level 3 Draft Published, CSS Print Profile Note Published

14 March 2013 | Archive

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published two documents today:

  • A Working Draft of CSS Paged Media Module Level 3. This module describes the page model that partitions a flow into pages. It builds on the Box model module and introduces and defines the page model and paged media. It adds functionality for pagination, page margins, page size and orientation, headers and footers, widows and orphans, and image orientation. Finally it extends generated content to enable page numbering and running headers / footers.
  • A Group Note of CSS Print Profile. This specification defines a subset of Cascading Style Sheets Level 2, revision 1 and CSS Paged Media Level 3 for printing across multiple devices and media types. It is designed for printing in situations where it is not feasible or desirable to install a printer-specific driver, and for situations were some variability in the output is acceptable. This profile is designed to work in conjunction with XHTML-Print and defines a minimum level of conformance as well as an extension set that provides stronger layout control for the printing of mixed text and images, tables and image collections.

Learn more about the Style Activity.

Call for Review: PROV Family of Documents Published as Proposed Recommendations

12 March 2013 | Archive

The Provenance Working Group has published four Proposed Recommendation Documents along with corresponding supporting notes. You can find a complete list at the PROV Overview draft. These documents 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. Comments are welcome through 9 April 2013. Learn more about the Semantic Web.

WebDriver Draft Published

12 March 2013 | Archive

The Browser Testing and Tools Working Group has published a Working Draft of WebDriver. The WebDriver API aims to provide a synchronous API that can be used for a variety of use cases, though it is primarily designed to support automated testing of web apps. This specification defines the WebDriver API, a platform and language-neutral interface and associated wire protocol that allows programs or scripts to introspect into, and control the behavior of a web browser. The WebDriver API is primarily intended to allow developers to write tests that automate a browser from a separate controlling process, but may also be implemented in such a way as to allow in-browser scripts to control a possibly separate browser. Learn more about the Web Testing Activity.

CSS Custom Properties for Cascading Variables Module Level 1 Draft Published

12 March 2013 | Archive

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Working Draft of CSS Custom Properties for Cascading Variables Module Level 1. This module introduces cascading variables as a new primitive value type that is accepted by all CSS properties, and custom properties for defining them. Learn more about the Style Activity.

Two Last Call drafts: The RDF Data Cube Vocabulary, Data Catalog Vocabulary (DCAT)

12 March 2013 | Archive

The Government Linked Data Working Group has published two Last Call Working Drafts today:

  • The RDF Data Cube Vocabulary. This is an RDF vocabulary for publishing multidimensional data, particularly statistical data. It is compatible with the cube model that underlies SDMX (Statistical Data and Metadata eXchange), a widely used ISO standard. The Data Cube Vocabulary brings essential SDMX elements to RDF, providing a standard way for governments to publish statistical information as Linked Data. Comments are welcome through 08 April.
  • Data Catalog Vocabulary (DCAT). This is an RDF vocabulary for expressing the contents of data catalogs, such as government data portals. DCAT is for catalogs of all kinds of data (not just RDF data), but uses RDF to support easy aggregation of catalogs and construction of services which can search across many unrelated catalogs. Comments are welcome through 08 April.

Learn more about the eGovernment Activity.

HTML Image Description Extension Draft Published

12 March 2013 | Archive

The HTML Working Group today published HTML Image Description Extension as First Public Working Draft. This specification ("HTML-longdesc") enables web authors to provide longer text descriptions for complex images. It defines the "longdesc" attribute to link descriptions with images in HTML5 content. HTML-longdesc is an extension specification that is part of the HTML5 family of specifications, which enables it to evolve independently and be finalized more rapidly. It is developed by the HTML Accessibility Task Force in coordination with the HTML WG and the WAI Protocols and Formats Working Group (PFWG). HTML-longdesc is part of W3C's work to ensure that the Open Web Platform is accessible to people with disabilities. Please see important additional information in the call for review e-mail. Learn more about the HTML Activity and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

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