Yesterday, as part of the W3C Technical Plenary day, I got the opportunity to introduce a new tool that I had been working on over the past few weeks, the W3C Cheatsheet for Web developers.

This cheatsheet aims at providing in a very compact and mobile-friendly format a compilation of useful knowledge extracted from W3C specifications — at this time, CSS, HTML, SVG and XPath —, completed by summaries of guidelines developed at W3C, in particular the WCAG2 accessibility guidelines, the Mobile Web Best Practices, and a number of internationalization tips.

Its main feature is a lookup search box, where one can start typing a keyword and get a list of matching properties/elements/attributes/functions in the above-mentioned specifications, and further details on those when selecting the one of interest.

The early feedback received both from TPAC participants after the demo and from the microblogging community has been really positive and makes me optimistic that this tool is filling a useful role.

This is very much a first release, and there are many aspects that will likely need improvements over time, in particular:

• I would like the cheatsheet to cover more content — from specifications not yet released as standards as well as from topics not yet covered (e.g. JavaScript interfaces),
• some people have reported that there might be accessibility problems with the current interface, that I’m eager to fix once I get specific bug reports,
• the cheatsheet doesn’t work in IE6 (and probably even in later versions), and it would be nice to make it work at least somewhat there.

The code behind the cheatsheetis already publicly available, and I’m hoping others will be interested to join me in developing this tool — I’m fully aware that the first thing that will need to get others involved will be some documentation on the architecture and data formats used in the cheatsheet, and I’m thus hoping to work on that in the upcoming few weeks.

In the meantime, I very much welcome bug reports and suggestions for improvements, either by private email to me ( dom@w3.org) or preferably to the publicly archivedmailing list public-qa-dev@w3.org.

The review period for the two Last Call working drafts published by the Mobile Web Best Practices Working Grouplast month ends tomorrow. This is a reminder that the public community is invited to review and comment the drafts:

• The Guidelines for Web Content Transformation Proxiesprovides guidance to implementers of Content Transformation proxies as to whether and how to transform Web content. This version is the result of returning the document to Last Call based on public feedback received during the first review period.
• The Mobile Web Application Best Practicesspecifies Best Practices for the development and delivery of Web applications on mobile devices.

Comments should be sent to the public-bpwg-comments@w3.orgmailing-list (with public archives). Thanks in advance!

Rotan Hanrahan will be giving a lightning talk on behalf of Sailesh Sathish at the

about Delivery Context interfaces during the first

panel. He'll be talking about

.

• Resolved: exdefinition to be changed to use the parent's element font size if set on font-size(just like em) Rationale:Avoid infinite loops in the spec. :)
• Resolved:Preserve CSS2.1's 0.5emfallback in CSS3 Values for when ex height cannot be found.
• The CSSWG has no objections in principle to Selectors API 2 introducing a new pseudo-class for its scoping element.
• display: run-in clarificationsand drop-shadow proposal(see also targetting filter effects) added to TPAC agenda.
• As of 2003 the CSSValue interface is deprecated+obsoleteand other specs should not rely on it. In response to Sylvain's messagethe CSSWG will update the DOM-L2-Stylespec to include this note inline.
• Discussed TPAC agenda, schedules, and presenting at Thursday's Developer Gathering.

Full minutes

An updated Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) 2.0 Working Draft was published 29 October 2009. It includes a revised supporting note "Implementing ATAG 2.0". ATAG defines how authoring tools should help Web developers produce Web content that is accessible and conforms to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. ATAG also defines how to make authoring tools accessible so that people with disabilities can use them. WAI encourages you to review ATAG 2.0 and submit any comments. See: Call for Review: ATAG 2.0 Working Draft updated, Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) Overview. Please send comments by 30 November 2009. (2009-10-29)

More than a year ago, we, the Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group, published a Last Call of a document then called Content Transformation Guidelines, and invited the community to review the document. The document provides guidance to Content Transformation proxies as to whether and how to transform Web content.

Many comments were received. They triggered extensive discussions within the group. Finding the right balance between allowing proxies to alter content that would otherwise not display successfully on mobile devices and reducing side-effects such proxies may have on Web applications already designed for mobile devices is no easy task! Significant changes were brought to the document as a result and another Last Call was published a couple of weeks ago under the title Guidelines for Web Content Transformation Proxies 1.0.

We think we have addressed and replied to all the comments, providing rationale when we have not incorporated the suggested changes. We deeply thank last year's commenters, and apologize for the time it took to address the comments!

Once again, we would like to invite the community at large (and in particular mobile Web authors who are impacted by the deployment of such transcoding proxies) to review and comment the document. The Status of This Documentsection contains a list of the changes made in response to user feedback.

The Last Call review period ends on 6 November 2009. Comments should be sent to the public-bpwg-comments@w3.orgpublic mailing-list (with public archives).

WAI has published a Last Call Working Draft of the Evaluation and Report Language (EARL) 1.0 Schema, updated Working Drafts of HTTP Vocabulary in RDF 1.0, Representing Content in RDF 1.0, Pointer Methods in RDF 1.0, Evaluation and Report Language (EARL) 1.0 Requirements, and a First Public Working Draft of the Evaluation and Report Language (EARL) 1.0 Guide. EARL provides a format for expressing test results, such as those generated by Web accessibility evaluation tools, using a vendor-neutral and platform-independent format. WAI encourages you to review EARL 1.0 documents and submit any comments. See: Call for Review: EARL 1.0 Last Call Working Draft e-mail, Evaluation and Report Language (EARL) Overview. Please send comments by 30 November 2009. (2009-10-29)

Richtlinien für barrierefreie Webinhalte (WCAG) 2.0, the German Authorized Translation of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, is now available, following completion of the W3C Authorized Translations process. WAI encourages translating WAI documents in all languages. See: WCAG 2.0 Translations for a list of other completed and planned translationsWCAG 2.0 German Authorized Translation Published e-mail (2009-10-29)

• Reviewed last call commentson Selectors Level 3from the Protocols and Formats Working Group. Resolved:that their first request is out-of-scope for Selectors. fantasai to respond and answer their other questions.
• Resolved:Remove "Namespaces and down-level clients" (Chapter 11) from Selectors.
• The CSSWG plans to review the state of Selectors implementation reports at TPAC: if we have enough implementation reports, we can move to PR directly.
• Resolved: Yves' commentson the Media Queries and CSS2.1 grammars result in no change.
• Briefly discussed problem with targetting filter effects. As this is a large problem, further discussion is deferred to TPAC and beyond.

Full minutes