The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Working Draft of CSS Writing Modes Level 3. CSS Writing Modes Level 3 defines CSS support for various international writing modes, such as left-to-right (e.g. Latin or Indic), right-to-left (e.g. Hebrew or Arabic), bidirectional (e.g. mixed Latin and Arabic) and vertical (e.g. Asian scripts). Inherently bottom-to-top scripts are not handled in this version. Learn more about the Style Activity.

The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Custom Elements. This specification describes the method for enabling the author to define and use new types of DOM elements in a document. Comments are welcome through 21 November. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The XML Query Working Group and the XSLT Working Group have published five Proposed Recommendations today:

• XQuery 3.0: An XML Query Language. XQuery is a domain-specific language for querying collections of XDM trees.
• XML Path Language (XPath) 3.0. XPath is a domain-specific language for referencing parts of a tree represented as an instance of the XPath and XQuery Data Model (XDM).
• XQuery and XPath Data Model 3.0.This specification defines the XPath and XQuery Data Model (XDM).
• XPath and XQuery Functions and Operators 3.0. The Functions and Operators specification defines facilities for XPath and XQuery.
• XSLT and XQuery Serialization 3.0. Serialization specifies how to represent an XDM instance as XML, as HTML or as text. The XDM is most often used to represent XML documents as trees, but can also represent other data formats such as JSON, RDF or relational databases.

Comments are welcome through 19 November. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity.

The Efficient XML Interchange Working Group has published a Proposed Edited Recommendation of Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) Format 1.0 (Second Edition). This document is the specification of the Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) format. EXI is a very compact representation for the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Information Set that is intended to simultaneously optimize performance and the utilization of computational resources. The EXI format uses a hybrid approach drawn from the information and formal language theories, plus practical techniques verified by measurements, for entropy encoding XML information. Using a relatively simple algorithm, which is amenable to fast and compact implementation, and a small set of datatype representations, it reliably produces efficient encodings of XML event streams. The grammar production system and format definition of EXI are presented. Comments are welcome through 20 November. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity.

The HTML Working Group has published three Working Drafts today:

• A First Public Working Draft of W3C HTML Ruby Markup Extensions. The ruby markup model currently described in the HTML specification is limited in its support for a number of features, notably jukugo and double-sided ruby, as well as inline ruby. This specification addresses these issues by introducing new elements and changing the ruby processing model. Specific care has been taken to ensure that authoring remains as simple as possible.
• A Working Draft of Polyglot Markup: A robust profile of the HTML5 vocabulary. A document that uses polyglot markup is a document that is a stream of bytes that parses into identical document trees (with some exceptions, as noted in the Introduction) when processed as HTML and when processed as XML. Polyglot markup that meets a well-defined set of constraints is interpreted as compatible, regardless of whether they are processed as HTML or as XHTML, per the HTML5 specification. Polyglot markup uses a specific DOCTYPE, namespace declarations, and a specific case—normally lower case but occasionally camel case—for element and attribute names. Polyglot markup uses lower case for certain attribute values. Further constraints include those on void elements, named entity references, and the use of scripts and style.
• A Working Draft of Encrypted Media Extensions. This proposal extends HTMLMediaElement providing APIs to control playback of protected content. The API supports use cases ranging from simple clear key decryption to high value video (given an appropriate user agent implementation). License/key exchange is controlled by the application. This specification does not define a content protection or Digital Rights Management system. Rather, it defines a common API that may be used to discover, select and interact with such systems as well as with simpler content encryption systems.

Learn more about the HTML Activity.

The Research and Development Working Group (RDWG) will hold an online symposium to share e-learning experiences and research; discuss different approaches to address accessibility issues in e-learning contexts; and explore next steps to advance accessibility in e-learning environments, including Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The Call for Papers is open until 15 November 2013. Learn more about the Symposium on Accessible E-Learning and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

W3C is pleased to launch its new online course, “JavaScript for Beginners”, to help Web developers understand the basic concepts of JavaScript. The course is 4 weeks long, to start on 11 November 2013. The main goal of this course is to make sure that participants master good JavaScript practices and avoid the pitfalls of the language. This course is a condensed set of tricks, advice, tools and good practices built around JavaScript, with a logical flow that is always illustrated by examples and assignments. JavaScript is one of the three major Web developer tools, along with HTML5 and CSS3, so register before October 28 to benefit from the early bird rate. Learn more about W3DevCampus, the W3C online training for Web developers.