W3C Blog

When we start writing and or read about the activities around the Open Web Platform, we realize that the Web has never been that active. Everyone is proposing, developping, testing. And even if this weekly news from HTML5 and broader topics seemed to be long, it doesn’t cover everything. It is also important to realize that if you are passionate about one of these topics, the full information is accessible and open. Quite exciting. Some of these topics could be the source of long technical blog posts. If you do, please leave a comment or let me know.

HTML Working Group Decisions

Issues about codecs vs octet and accessibility API mapping have been closed by amicable resolutions. A couple of polls have been opened and some already closed

• Table borders opened until April 4, 2011
• u element opened until April 4, 2011
• playbackrate undefined opened until April 5, 2011
• “What verbiage should HTML5 use for the first two paragraphs of the img element definition?” opened until April 5, 2011
• “Where/who will define the requirements on the possible values of text alternative examples?” opened until April 5, 2011
• “What to do about validation when the image element is missing the alt attribute?” opened until April 5, 2011

RDFa prefixes in HTML5 - ISSUE-120

RDFa is a language to add additional structure to markup already existing. It is a way to extend the hosting language. It uses optional prefixes. Adoption has not been an issue with 501% growth. It has been then decided to clarify the way RDFa prefixes are used in the HTML5 specification. A formal objection by Tab Atkins has been recorded.

summary attribute on table element - ISSUE-32

The summary attribute on table element was a way to give information about the content of the table. It is usually called hidden metadata, because the information is not directly accessible to sighted users such as alt attribute for example. The name “discoverable metadata” is proposed for labelling such attributes. The change proposal which invited to drop the summary attribute has been chosen. This decision has been carefully written. Read it carefully. There are suggestions as usual to reopen the issues with meaningul data and input.

Conversations

Proposals

• Improving sandbox for popups by Jacob Rossi (Microsoft)
• text/html-sandboxed should just be a sandboxed MIME type attribute by Jacob Rossi (Microsoft)

Announcements

• New draft for Use of the Content-Disposition Header Field in the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). HTTPWG bis is working actively on tidying HTTP specification.
• Task Force on Home Networking Content and Services Discovery and Control. This is part of the activities around Web and TV.
• new Working Draft for Clipboard API and Events by Hallvord R. M. Steen (Opera).
• Prefer Header for HTTP by James Snell
• Last Call for Web Sockets protocol. All comments should be submitted to hybi@ietf.org by April 15 at the latest.
• Draft minutes of HTTP WG in Prague

Hot Topics

• One of the most active topic is the PUT/DELETE with HTML form. Mike Amundsen has created a document to explain how it would work with html. The discussion is also happening on HTMLWG. There were similar discussions around Atom and PUT in the past.
• Any future plans, or has IndexedDB replaced WebSQL?
• Web applications and architecture
• selection.modify behavior across platforms
• When writing tests in preparation for Opera’s implementation of <details> and <summary>, Wilhelm Joys Andersen had a few questions.
• Peer-to-peer communication, video conferencing, and related topics (3) by Ian Hickson (Google)
• Implementation difficulties for MediaController
• DOM Range: redefining behavior under DOM mutation
• Canvas change for improved hit testing that also facilitates accessibility by Rich Schwerdtfeger (IBM)
• Result of calling MultipleReads on FileReader related to File API multiread
• Explanation of the Web Apps WG Testing process
• Selectors API IDL Issues by Lachlan Hunt (Opera)
• WHATWG Weekly: the rubber hits the road by Shelley Powers

This column is written by Karl Dubost, working in the Developer Relations & Tools at Opera Software.