The CSV on the Web Working Group published two First Public Working Drafts today:

• The CSV on the Web: Use Cases and Requirements collects use cases that are at the basis of the work of the Working Group. A large percentage of the data published on the Web is tabular data, commonly published as comma separated values (CSV) files. The Working Group aim to specify technologies that provide greater interoperability for data dependent applications on the Web when working with tabular datasets comprising single or multiple files using CSV, or similar, format. This document lists a first set of use cases compiled by the Working Group that are considered representative of how tabular data is commonly used within data dependent applications. The use cases observe existing common practice undertaken when working with tabular data, often illustrating shortcomings or limitations of existing formats or technologies. This document also provides a first set of requirements derived from these use cases that have been used to guide the specification design.
• The Model for Tabular Data and Metadata on the Web outlines a basic data model, or infoset, for tabular data and metadata about that tabular data. The document contains first drafts for various methods of locating metadata: one of the output the Working Group is chartered for is to produce a metadata vocabulary and standard method(s) to find such metadata. It also contains some non-normative information about a best practice syntax for tabular data, for mapping into that data model, to contribute to the standardisation of CSV syntax by IETF (as a possible update of RFC4180).

Learn more about the Data Activity.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of CSS Flexible Box Layout Module Level 1. The specification describes a CSS box model optimized for user interface design. In the flex layout model, the children of a flex container can be laid out in any direction, and can “flex” their sizes, either growing to fill unused space or shrinking to avoid overflowing the parent. Both horizontal and vertical alignment of the children can be easily manipulated. Nesting of these boxes (horizontal inside vertical, or vertical inside horizontal) can be used to build layouts in two dimensions. CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, in speech, etc. Comments are welcome through 22 April 2014. Learn more about the Style Activity.

The Web Performance Working Group has published a Working Draft of Navigation Timing 2. This specification defines a unified interface to store and retrieve high resolution performance metric data related to the navigation of a document.

The Group also updated the Candidate Recommendation of Resource Timing, which defines an interface for web applications to access the complete timing information for resources in a document. The main change is that onresourcetimingbufferfull is now an event handler instead of a callback function. A diff document is available.

Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Web Cryptography Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Web Cryptography API. This JavaScript API performs basic cryptographic operations in web applications, such as hashing, signature generation and verification, and encryption and decryption. Additionally, it describes how applications can generate and/or manage the keying material necessary to perform these operations. Comments are welcome through 20 May 2014. Learn more about the Security Activity.