There is still time to register for the W3C HTML5 online course that began 2 December. Acclaimed trainer Michel Buffa will cover the techniques that developers and designers need to create great Web pages and apps. This end of the year course edition features numerous examples and assignments chosen for the season. Read feedback about the September course and enroll in this course today. Learn more about W3DevCampus, W3C’s online training for Web developers.

W3C announced a Workshop on Web Payments: How do you want to pay?, 24-25 March 2014, in Paris (France). The event is hosted by the W3C France Office.

This workshop seeks to make it easier to monetize open Web applications, as an effective alternative to proprietary native app ecosystems. In essence, we would like to improve the end user experience and give users greater freedom in how they pay, to reduce the burden on developers and merchants, and to create a level playing field for competing payment solutions providers large and small. We are expecting broad participation from financial institutions, governments, mobile network operators, payment solution providers, technology companies, retailers, content creators, and non-governmental organizations. The workshop will seek to establish a broad roadmap for work on open standards for Web payments, along with proposals for initial small steps along the road. We thank Telefónica and Worldline for agreeing to co-chair the Workshop. W3C membership is not required to participate. The event is open to all. All participants are required to submit a position paper by 8 February 2014.

The Web Applications (WebApps) Working Group and the Web Application Security (WebAppSec) Working Group have published today a Proposed Recommendation of Cross-Origin Resource Sharing. This document defines a mechanism to enable client-side cross-origin requests. Specifications that enable an API to make cross-origin requests to resources can use the algorithms defined by this specification. If such an API is used on http://example.org resources, a resource on http://hello-world.example can opt in using the mechanism described by this specification (e.g., specifying Access-Control-Allow-Origin: http://example.org as response header), which would allow that resource to be fetched cross-origin from http://example.org. Comments are welcome through 14 January 2014. Learn more about the Security Activity and the Rich Web Clients Activity.

The CSS Working Group has republished a Working Draft of CSS Object Model (CSSOM). CSSOM defines APIs (including generic parsing and serialization rules) for Media Queries, Selectors, and of course CSS itself. Learn more about the Style Activity.

The CSS Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of CSS Shapes Module Level 1. CSS Shapes describe geometric shapes for use in CSS. For Level 1, CSS Shapes can be applied to floats. A circle shape on a float will cause inline content to wrap around the circle shape instead of the float’s bounding box. Comments are welcome by 7 January 2014. Learn more about the Style Activity.

The Web Performance Working Group has published a First Public Last Call Working Draft of High Resolution Time Level 2. 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 by 8 January 2014. Learn more about the Rich Web Clients Activity.