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

• A First Public Working Draft of CSS Pseudo-Elements Module Level 4. This CSS module defines pseudo-elements, abstract elements that represent portions of the CSS render tree that can be selected and styled.
• A Working Draft of CSS Exclusions Module Level 1. CSS Exclusions define arbitrary areas around which inline content can flow. CSS Exclusions can be defined on any CSS block-level elements. CSS Exclusions extend the notion of content wrapping previously limited to floats.

CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, in speech, etc. Learn more about the Style Activity.

The IndieUI Working Group today published an updated Working Draft of IndieUI: Events 1.0 – Events for User Interface Independence. This draft includes new events and a refined technical model. IndieUI: Events defines a way for different user interactions to be translated into simple events and communicated to Web applications. (For example, if a user wants to scroll down a page, they might use their finger on a touch screen, or click a scroll bar with a mouse, or use a scroll wheel, or say ‘scroll down’ with a voice command. With IndieUI, these are all sent to the Web app as simply: scroll down.) IndieUI will make it easier for Web applications to work in a wide range of contexts — different devices (such as mobile phones and tablets), different assistive technologies (AT), different user needs. With IndieUI, Web application developers will have a uniform way to design applications that work for multiple devices and contexts. Comments on this Draft are encouraged by 13 February 2015. Learn more from the IndieUI Overview and the Updated Working Draft: IndieUI Events e-mail; and read about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

The Web Applications Working Group and the Technical Architecture Group have published a First Public Working Draft of Packaging on the Web. This document describes an approach for creating packages of files for use on the web. The approach is to package them using a new application/package media type. To access packages related to other files on the web, clients that understand packages of files look for a Link header or (in HTML documents) a <link> element with a new link relation of package. Other formats may define format-specific mechanisms for locating related packages. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity and the Technical Architecture Group.

A First Public Working Draft of Cognitive Accessibility User Research was published today by the Cognitive and Learning Disabilities Accessibility Task Force, a joint task force of the Protocols and Formats Working Group and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group. This planned W3C Working Group Note describes the challenges of using web technologies for people with learning disabilities or cognitive disabilities. It provides a basis for subsequent work to develop strategies and techniques to improve accessibility for these user groups. Learn more about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group and the SVG Working Group invite implementation of the updated Candidate Recommendation of Compositing and Blending Level 1. Compositing describes how shapes of different elements are combined into a single image. There are various possible approaches for compositing. Previous versions of SVG and CSS used Simple Alpha Compositing. In this model, each element is rendered into its own buffer and is then merged with its backdrop using the Porter Duff source-over operator. This specification will define a new compositing model that expands upon the Simple Alpha Compositing model by offering: additional Porter Duff compositing operators; advanced blending modes which allow control of how colors mix in the areas where shapes overlap; compositing groups. In addition, this specification will define CSS properties for blending and group isolation and the properties of the ‘globalcompositeoperation’ attribute as defined in HTML Canvas 2D Context, Level 2. Learn more about the Style Activity and the Graphics Activity.