The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of CSS Color Module Level 3 . CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a language for describing the rendering of HTML and XML documents in a variety of ways, including on screen and paper. CSS uses color-related properties and values to color the text, backgrounds, borders, and other parts of elements in a document. This specification describes color values and properties for foreground color and group opacity. These include properties and values from CSS level 2 and new values. Comments are welcome through 25 November. Learn more about the Style Activity.

W3C today launches the Web Events Working Group , whose chartered mission is to provide methods to enable the use of multi-touch and pen-tablet input on devices of all types. Web browsers and mobile devices are making increasing use of touch-sensitive inputs, such as with a screen, trackpad, or tablet interface, as the primary or supplementary interface for web applications. A related class of devices, including drawing tablets, interactive surfaces, pen devices, digital whiteboards, and spatial sensors, are also becoming more Web-enabled, driving the need to account for a wider range of capability than simple touch interfaces. The aim of this group is to determine an appropriate set of functionality to standardize, and to define those features in way that may be deployed quickly, widely, and interoperably. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The RDFa Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of RDFa Core 1.1 . RDFa Core is a specification for attributes to express structured data in any markup language, with an emphasis on HTML-family languages, the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Format, the Open Document Format and other Web-enabled document formats. The specification enables the human-readable and machine-readable markup of people, places, events, products, recipes, social networks, and many other concepts that are frequently published on the web. RDFa 1.1 improves upon RDFa 1.0 by adding a number of features requested by people to ease authoring. The announcement as a Last Call Working Draft is an open invitation to the general public to review and provide feedback on the specification via the RDFa Working Group mailing list . The deadline for review feedback is 6 December. Learn more about the Semantic Web.

The Web Applications Working Group published three specifications today, including a first draft of File API: Directories and System , which defines an API to navigate file system hierarchies, and defines a means by which a user agent may expose sandboxed sections of a user's local filesystem to Web Applications. The API builds on the other two updated specifications, File API: Writer and File API . The Working Group also updated the Widget Requirements . A widget is an interactive single purpose application for displaying and/or updating local data or data on the Web, packaged in a way to allow a single download and installation on a user's machine or mobile device. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The HTML Working Grouppublished eight documents:

• Working Drafts of the HTML5 specification , the accompanying explanatory document HTML5 differences from HTML4 , and the related non-normative reference HTML: The Markup Language.
• Working Drafts of the specifications HTML+RDFa 1.1 and HTML Microdata , which define mechanisms for embedding machine-readable data in HTML documents, and the specification HTML Canvas 2D Context, which defines a 2D immediate-mode graphics API for use with the HTML5 <canvas> element.
• HTML5: Techniques for providing useful text alternatives, which is intended to help authors provide useful text alternatives for images in HTML documents.
• Polyglot Markup: HTML-Compatible XHTML Documents, which is intended to help authors produce XHTML documents that are also compatible with non-XML HTML syntax and parsing rules.

Learn more about HTML5.

The Mobile Web Application Best Practices was published as a W3C Proposed Recommendationlast week, and we are excited about it within the Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group, as the Proposed Recommendationstep is the last one before publication as a final W3C Recommendation, and is basically synonymous with stable and implemented.

Indeed, over the last few months, we've been gathering implementation feedback for the specification and created an implementation report. We would like to thank the companies and individuals who helped us build this report!

No major change in this new version of the document, although a few clarifications have been made based on comments received:

• we clarified that the 3.2 Security and privacysection does not attempt to provide an exhaustive survey of security issues and added reference to OWASP for a good summary of common Web security Best Practices.
• we clarified that informational images are not good candidates for spriting in 3.4.6 Aggregate Static Images into a Single Composite Resource (Sprites).
• we added a note that new interaction methods are likely to emerge in the future in 3.5.3 Design for Multiple Interaction Methodsand added reference to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 as available guidelines for assistive technology.
• we added another example to the 3.5.6 Make Telephone Numbers "Click-to-Call"section that uses the SMS scheme defined in RFC5724, noting that support for this scheme is limited at the time of writing though.

The final review period for this Proposed Recommendation runs through 19 November 2010. It is more particularly directed at the W3C Membership, although other interested parties may send comments as well.

The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of Mobile Web Application Best Practices. The document collects the most relevant engineering practices to aid the development of rich and dynamic Web application on mobile devices, promoting best practices that enable a better user experience and warning against those that are considered harmful.

Comments are welcome through 19 November 2010.

The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of Mobile Web Application Best Practices . The goal of this document is to aid the development of rich and dynamic mobile Web applications. It collects the most relevant engineering practices, promoting those that enable a better user experience and warning against those that are considered harmful. Comments are welcome through 19 November. Learn more about the Mobile Web Initiative Activity.

W3C announces today an important standard for making mathematics on the Web more accessible and international, especially for early mathematics education. MathML 3 is the third version of a standard supported in a wide variety of applications including Web pages, e-books, equation editors, publishing systems, screen readers (that read aloud the information on a page) and braille displays, ink input devices, e-learning and computational software. MathML 3 is part of W3C's Open Web Platform, which includes HTML5, CSS, and SVG. "We expect wider deployment of MathML 3.0 will facilitate communication of mathematics and science over the Web," said Don McClure, Executive Director, American Mathematical Society. Read the full press release and testimonials . Learn more about Math at W3C.