W3C News

W3C Launches Decisions and Decision-Making Incubator Group

2010-03-11T19:40:14Z

W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the Decisions and Decision-Making Incubator Group, whose mission is to determine the requirements, use cases, and a representation of decisions and decision-making in a collaborative and networked environment suitable for leading to a potential standard for decision exchange, shared situational awareness, and measurement of the speed, effectiveness, and human factors of decision-making.. The following W3C Members have sponsored the charter for this group: DISA, MITRE, and CNR. Read more about the Incubator Activity, an initiative to foster development of emerging Web-related technologies. Incubator Activity work is not on the W3C standards track.

User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) 2.0 Updated; New Implementation Guide Published

2010-03-11T18:49:30Z

The User Agent Accessibility Guidelines Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) 2.0. UAAG defines how browsers, media players, and other "user agents" should support accessibility for people with disabilities and work with assistive technologies. This draft adds requirements in seven new areas, including support for speech input, video playback controls and a new section on conformance. It introduces a new supporting document, Implementing UAAG 2.0 as a First Public Working Draft. Read the invitation to review the UAAG 2.0 Working Draft and about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

Community Invited to Discuss Conversational Applications at Workshop

2010-03-11T17:54:15Z

W3C announced today a Workshop on Conversational Applications - Use Cases and Requirements for New Models of Human Language to Support Mobile Conversational Systems, 18-19 June 2010 in Somerset, New Jersey (USA), Hosted by Openstream. There is currently an increasing need for new capabilities of the human language model to support sophisticated conversational applications. The goal of the Workshop is to understand the limitations of the current W3C language model in order to develop a more comprehensive one. Participants will collect and analyze use cases and prioritize requirements that ultimately will improve support for language capabilities that are unsupported today. Position papers are due 2 April. Please see the Call for Participation for more information.

WebCGM 2.1 is a W3C Recommendation

2010-03-09T22:18:17Z

The WebCGM Working Group has published a W3C Recommendation of WebCGM 2.1. Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM) is an ISO standard, defined by ISO/IEC 8632:1999, for the interchange of 2D vector and mixed vector/raster graphics. WebCGM is a profile of CGM, which adds Web linking and is optimized for Web applications in technical illustration, electronic documentation, geophysical data visualization, and similar fields. WebCGM aims to balance graphical expressive power on the one hand, and simplicity and implementability on the other. A small but powerful set of standardized metadata elements supports the functionalities of hyperlinking and document navigation, picture structuring and layering, and enabling search and query of WebCGM picture content. WebCGM 2.1 refines and completes the features found in WebCGM 2.0. Learn more about the Graphics Activity.

Call for Review: XProc - An XML Pipeline Language Proposed Recommendation

2010-03-09T22:15:30Z

The XML Processing Model Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of XProc: An XML Pipeline Language. This specification describes the syntax and semantics of XProc: An XML Pipeline Language, a language for describing operations to be performed on XML documents. Pipelines are made up of simple steps which perform atomic operations on XML documents and constructs similar to conditionals, iteration, and exception handlers which control which steps are executed. The group has produced an implementation report Comments are welcome through 15 April. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity.

Last Call: Web Security Context: User Interface Guidelines

2010-03-09T22:07:55Z

The Web Security Context Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Web Security Context: User Interface Guidelines. This specification deals with the trust decisions that users must make online, and with ways to support them in making safe and informed decisions where possible. This document specifies user interactions with a goal toward making security usable, based on known best practice in this area. Comments are welcome through 31 March. Learn more about the Security Activity.

Ontology for Media Resource 1.0, API for Media Resource 1.0 Drafts Published

2010-03-09T22:04:37Z

The Media Annotations Working Group has published Working Drafts of Ontology for Media Resource 1.0 and API for Media Resource 1.0. The former document defines the Ontology for Media Resource 1.0, a core vocabulary to describe media resources on the Web. It is defined based on a core set of properties which covers basic metadata to describe media resources. Further it defines syntactic and semantic level mappings between elements from existing formats. The ontology is supposed to foster the interoperability among various kinds of metadata formats currently used to describe media resources on the Web. The latter defines a client-side API to access metadata information related to media resources on the Web. Learn more about the Video in the Web Activity.

Dr. Jeffrey Jaffe Named W3C CEO

2010-03-08T13:00:05Z

W3C today named Dr. Jeffrey Jaffe its new Chief Executive Officer. "Web technologies continue to be the vehicle for every industry to incorporate the rapid pace of change into their way of doing business," said Dr. Jaffe. "I'm excited to join W3C at this time of increased innovation, since W3C is the place where the industry comes together to set standards for the Web in an open and collaborative fashion." As W3C CEO, Dr. Jaffe will work with Director Tim Berners-Lee, staff, Membership, and the public to evolve and communicate W3C's organizational vision. The CEO is responsible for W3C's global operations, for maintaining the interests of all of the W3C’s stakeholders, and for sustaining a culture of cooperation and transparency, so that W3C continues to be the leading forum for the technical development and stewardship of the Web. Read the CEO Blog and learn more in the press release.

Seven Documents Related to HTML Published

2010-03-05T05:57:23Z

W3C published today seven documents related to HTML:

HTML 5 and HTML5 differences from HTML4. In addition, some content that was part of the HTML 5 specification has been published in two new standalone drafts: HTML Canvas 2D Context and HTML Microdata.
HTML: The Markup Language, a first draft. This document describes the HTML markup language and provides details necessary for producers of HTML content to create documents that conform to the language. By design, it does not define related APIs, nor attempt to specify how consumers of HTML content are meant to process documents, nor attempt to be a tutorial or "how to" authoring guide.
HTML+RDFa, which defines rules and guidelines for adapting the RDF in XHTML: Syntax and Processing (RDFa) specification for use in the HTML5 and XHTML5 members of the HTML family.
Additional Requirements for Bidi in HTML, a first draft. Authoring a web app that needs to support both right-to-left and left-to-right interfaces, or to take as input and display both left-to-right and right-to-left data, usually presents a number of challenges that make it an especially laborious and bug-prone task. Some of these are due to browser bugs, but some can be traced to a gap in the specification of the bidirectional aspects of a given HTML feature. And some of these challenges could be greatly simplified by adding a few strategically placed new HTML features. This document proposes fixes for some of the most repetitive pain points.

All documents were published by the HTML Working Group except the last one, published by the Internationalization Core Working Group.

Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) 3.0 Draft Published

2010-03-05T05:37:45Z

The Voice Browser Working Group has published a Working Draft of Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) 3.0. This document specifies VoiceXML 3.0, a modular XML language for creating interactive media dialogs that feature synthesized speech, recognition of spoken and DTMF key input, telephony, mixed initiative conversations, and recording and presentation of a variety of media formats including digitized audio, and digitized video. See the diff-marked version of changes since the previous draft, and learn more about the Voice Browser Activity.

Security Drafts Update: XML Signature Syntax and Processing 2.0; Canonical XML Version 2.0

2010-03-05T05:34:47Z

The XML Security Working Group has published two Working Drafts: XML Signature Syntax and Processing Version 2.0 and Canonical XML Version 2.0. The first specifies XML syntax and processing rules for creating and representing digital signatures. XML Signatures can be applied to any digital content (data object), including XML. The second is a major rewrite of Canonical XML Version 1.1 to address issues around performance, streaming, hardware implementation, robustness, minimizing attack surface, determining what is signed and more. It also incorporates an update to Exclusive Canonicalization, effectively a 2.0 version, as well. Learn more about the Security Activity.

Call for Review: XML Linking Language (XLink) Version 1.1 Proposed Recommendation

2010-02-25T23:00:07Z

The XML Core Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of XML Linking Language (XLink) Version 1.1. This specification defines the XML Linking Language (XLink) Version 1.1, which allows elements to be inserted into XML documents in order to create and describe links between resources. It uses XML syntax to create structures that can describe links similar to the simple unidirectional hyperlinks of today's HTML, as well as more sophisticated links. Comments are welcome through 31 March. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity.

Call for Review: Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) Version 1.1 Proposed Recommendation

2010-02-23T17:33:08Z

The Voice Browser Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) Version 1.1. The Speech Synthesis Markup Language Specification is designed to provide a rich, XML-based markup language for assisting the generation of synthetic speech in Web and other applications. The essential role of the markup language is to provide authors of synthesizable content a standard way to control aspects of speech such as pronunciation, volume, pitch, rate, etc. across different synthesis-capable platforms. SSML 1.1 improves SSML 1.0 support for a broader set of natural (human) languages. Known implementations are documented in the Implementation Report, along with the associated test suite. Comments are welcome through 23 March. Learn more about the Voice Browser Activity.

Candidate Recommendation Updated for Timed Text Markup Language (TTML) 1.0

2010-02-23T16:16:16Z

The Timed Text Working Group has published an updated Candidate Recommendation of Timed Text Markup Language (TTML) 1.0. TTML is a content type that represents timed text media for the purpose of interchange among authoring systems. Timed text is textual information that is intrinsically or extrinsically associated with timing information. This an updated document based on implementation experience; see the list of changes. A test suite for TTML is available, along with its coverage report and a preliminary implementation report. The test suite and implementations are work in progress and may not reflect all of the changes of this document. Learn more about the Video in the Web Activity.

Second Web Compatibility Test for Mobile Browsers Released

2010-02-23T16:03:34Z

The Mobile Web Test Suites Working Group has just released a brand new Web Compatibility Test for Mobile Browsers. Based on the same idea of evaluating support of a number of Web technologies at a glance as in the first Web Compatibility Test published in July 2008, this second version features a number of more recent technologies that promise to make Web browsers more powerful, in particular on mobile devices. Learn more about the Mobile Web Initiative.