W3C announced today a new Web Payments Initiative to integrate payments seamlessly into the Open Web Platform. W3C calls upon all industry stakeholders –banks, credit card companies, governments, mobile network operators, payment solution providers, technology companies, retailers, and content creators– to join the new Payments Interest Group and leverage the unique ability of the Web to bridge ecosystem diversity and reach users everywhere, on any device. The result will be new business opportunities, an improved user experience for online transactions, reduced fraud, and increased interoperability among traditional solutions and future payment innovations. Read the full press release and testimonials from W3C Members, including Bloomberg, Gemalto, GRIN Technologies, Ingenico Group, NACS, Rabobank, and Yandex.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published seven Group Notes today, on specifications that at this time, the group does not envisage further work on.

• CSS TV Profile 1.0. This specification defines a subset of Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 and CSS3 module: Color specifications tailored to the needs and constraints of TV devices.
• CSS Presentation Levels Module. Presentation levels are integer values attached to elements in a document. Elements that are below, at, or above a certain threshold can be styled differently. This feature has two compelling use cases. First, slide presentations with transition effects can be described. For example, list items can be progressively revealed by sliding in from the side. Second, outline views of documents, where only the headings to a certain level are visible, can be generated.
• CSS Mobile Profile 2.0. This specification defines in general a subset of CSS 2.1 that is to be considered a baseline for interoperability between implementations of CSS on constrained devices (e.g. mobile phones). Its intent is not to produce a profile of CSS incompatible with the complete specification, but rather to ensure that implementations that due to platform limitations cannot support the entire specification implement a common subset that is interoperable not only amongst constrained implementations but also with complete ones. Additionally, this specification aligns itself as much as possible with the OMA Wireless CSS 1.1 specification. At the same time, OMA is doing alignment work in OMA Wireless CSS 1.2. It is aimed at aligning the mandatory compliance items between CSS Mobile Profile 2.0 and OMA Wireless CSS 1.2.
• CSS Marquee Module Level 3. This Note replaces a draft specification for CSS features relating to a “marquee” effect.
• Behavioral Extensions to CSS. This Note replaces a proposal for features in CSS that allow to bind “behaviors” to the elements of a document. A “behavior” is defined by a URL and typically points to an object (in a language such as XBL) that defines its own appearance and user interaction. Such a binding allows, e.g. to replace an element by a complex user interface control.
• CSS3 Hyperlink Presentation Module. This note replaces a draft specification for CSS features related to different ways of presenting hypertext.
• The CSS ‘Reader’ Media Type. This note replaces a draft specification for a media type called ‘reader’, for targeting style sheets at devices that are able to synchronously speak and display text.

Learn more about the Style Activity.

The Data on the Web Best Practices Working Group has published a Working Draft of Data on the Web Best Practices Use Cases & Requirements. This document lists use cases, compiled by the Data on the Web Best Practices Working Group, that represent scenarios of how data is commonly published on the Web and how it is used. This document also provides a set of requirements derived from these use cases that will be used to guide the development of the set of Data on the Web Best Practices and the development of two new vocabularies: Quality and Granularity Description Vocabulary and Data Usage Description Vocabulary. Learn more about the Data Activity.