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All posts by Coralie Mercier

About Coralie Mercier

Coralie is Head of W3C Marketing and Communications.

Upcoming W3C Workshop: Secure the Web Forward

padlocks attached to a fence, picture by Parsoa Khorsand

W3C announced today the W3C Workshop “Secure the Web Forward”, June 7-8 2023, Hosted by Microsoft Reactor, London, UK.

The Secure the Web Forward W3C Workshop brings together experts in standards and best practices needed to secure Web Applications, practitioners of Security Supply Chain in Open Source contexts, developer advocates with a focus on security and developers, designers and technologists with experience in adopting and deploying Web security standards and practices. We aim to develop a comprehensive picture and roadmap to address the challenges Web developers face in ensuring their applications are secure.

The scope includes:

  • How to bring the “secure software supply chain” approach to the web development community.
  • Guidance for different types of web developers who work at different levels of the stack.
  • How to make emerging web application security standards and technologies easier to use and adopt by web developers.
  • How can open source security focused efforts better support the web developer community?
  • How can Open Source security review processes serve as inspiration for review of new web specifications?

The Program Committee is exploring how to make use of the venue’s remote participation capabilities and will update the workshop home page as these get settled. Attendance is free for all invited participants and is open to the public, whether or not W3C members.

For more information on the workshop, please see the workshop details and submission instructions. Position papers are due by April 24, 2023.

W3C welcomes feedback on the beta of its new website

Screenshot of the beta version of the homepage of the redesigned W3C websiteW3C invites public feedback on a beta release of the W3C website redesign. The new site features a cleaner and more modern look, a simplified information architecture, improved accessibility, and more integration throughout the site. Once the beta of the English site has concluded, we will offer sites in Japanese and Chinese.

The scope of the redesign is limited to most of our public pages, but we will gradually work to include the rest of the site.

You can read a bit more on the beta and its context in the W3C blog post, and about the redesign work and process in Studio 24’s blog post. We look forward to your feedback.

W3C sun-setting online unified validator; community may fork Unicorn

blue check markW3C plans to stop providing the on-line unified validator service Unicorn as of 31 March 2023, due to lack of resources to maintain the project. We encourage interested people in the community to fork Unicorn. We have many other developer tools such as the markup and CSS validators, and checkers like the Internationalization checker, link and feed checkers.

W3C’s unified validator Unicorn helped improve the quality of Web pages by performing a variety of different checks, by gathering the results of the popular HTML and CSS validators as well as the Feed validator.

Unicorn, which got its name from “unified” and “Conformance Observation Report Notation”, started in April 2006 and was publicly introduced in July 2006. It took another four years before the public release of Unicorn, All-in-One Validator in July 2010.

W3C re-launched as a public-interest non-profit organization

megaphoneThe World Wide Web Consortium began the year 2023 by forming a new public-interest non-profit organization. The new entity preserves our member-driven approach, existing worldwide outreach and cooperation while allowing for additional partners around the world beyond Europe and Asia. The new organization also preserves the core process and mission of the Consortium to shepherd the web, by developing open web standards as a single global organization with contributions from W3C Members, staff, and the international community.

Our Director, Tim Berners-Lee, noted: “Today, I am proud of the profound impact W3C has had, its many achievements accomplished with our Members and the public, and I look forward to the continued empowering enhancements W3C enables as it launches its own public-interest non-profit organization, building on 28 years of experience.”

Our vision for the future is a web that is truly a force for good. A World Wide Web that is truly international and more inclusive, more respectful of its users. A web that supports truth better than falsehood, people more than profits, humanity rather than hate. A web that works for everyone, because of everyone. To learn more read our press release.

W3C invites implementations of WoT Thing Description 1.1, WoT Discovery and WoT Architecture 1.1

The Web of Things (WoT) Working Group invites implementations of the following Candidate Recommendations:

  • Web of Things (WoT) Thing Description 1.1 describes the metadata and interfaces of Things, where a Thing is an abstraction of a physical or virtual entity that provides interactions to and participates in the Web of Things. This specification describes a superset of the features defined in the WoT Thing Description 1.0 specification.
  • Web of Things (WoT) Discovery describes how to discover and obtain the Thing Description of a Thing in a distributed environment for various use cases.
  • Web of Things (WoT) Architecture 1.1 describes the abstract architecture for the W3C Web of Things based on a set of requirements derived from use cases for multiple application domains. This specification describes a superset of the features defined in the WoT Architecture 1.0 specification.

Please send comments by 16 February 2023.

W3C Advisory Committee Elects Advisory Board in Special Election

Logo for the W3C Advisory BoardThe W3C Advisory Committee has elected the following people to fill four seats in a special election of the W3C Advisory Board: Qing An (Alibaba Group), Tantek Çelik (Mozilla Foundation), Elika J Etemad (W3C Invited Expert), Charles Nevile (ConsenSys). Many thanks to the 11 candidates.

The newly elected participants join continuing Advisory Board fellows Heejin Chung (Samsung), Wei Ding (Huawei), Tatsuya Igarashi (Sony), Florian Rivoal (W3C Invited Expert), Tzviya Siegman (Wiley), Avneesh Singh (DAISY Consortium), Chris Wilson (Google).

Many thanks to David Singer (Apple), Eric Siow (Intel), Léonie Watson (TetraLogical), and Hongru Zhu (Alibaba) who stepped down to focus on being members of the W3C Board of Directors.

Created in March 1998, the Advisory Board provides ongoing guidance to the W3C Team on issues of strategy, management, legal matters, process, and conflict resolution. The Advisory Board manages the evolution of the Process Document. The elected Members of the Advisory Board participate as individual contributors and not representatives of their organizations. Advisory Board participants use their best judgment to find the best solutions for the Web, not just for any particular network, technology, vendor, or user. Read more about the Advisory Board and its work.

W3C accepting proposals for an Executive Search Firm

magnifierW3C is accepting proposals for the services of an Executive Search Firm to assist in the recruitment of a Chief Executive Officer (CEO). The firm shall assist in attracting, interviewing, and hiring a Chief Executive Officer.

Requested services include developing a position description, conducting a global search, vetting qualified candidates, and assisting in the final selection in coordination with the Chairs of the W3C Personnel Committee.

Proposals must be submitted by Monday, 23 January 2023. We expect to make a firm selection by February 20, 2023.

W3C Board of Directors successfully brokered MIT Asset Transfer Agreement

Following its formation on 20 October, the W3C Board of Directors is pleased to have reached an agreement with MIT that transfers assets at MIT to World Wide Web Consortium, Inc. The Web Consortium continues its mission to lead the web to its full potential by developing standards for an open and equitable web.

We are very pleased with the completion of this critical milestone in the World Wide Web Consortium’s transition to its own legal entity, set to launch in January 2023. More information will be available from our website in January.

Dr. Jeffrey Jaffe steps down as W3C CEO; Ralph Swick appointed Interim CEO

Dr. Jeffrey Jaffe addressing an audience After serving as W3C Chief Executive Officer for 12 years, Dr. Jeffrey Jaffe stepped down. From March 2010 till December 2022, Jeff led the Consortium with purpose and skills informed by several different careers as a researcher, manager, and executive, for a succession of organizations. He was responsible for all of W3C’s global operations, for maintaining the interests of all of 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.

Jeff’s three-pronged strategic focus on participation, potential of the web and Member value led to key successes such as increasing participation by a factor of 10, growing our global footprint, a stronger technical agenda, agility in our W3C Process, addressing industry and societal needs, member growth, and some progress on inclusion and diversity.

Jeff noted “This work has enhanced the web, whose role as the center of modern infrastructure only gains in importance over time. The web’s essential role during the COVID-19 pandemic punctuated the criticality of the web and of our work.“

Jeff was a critical force in the World Wide Web Consortium’s transition to its own legal entity, set to launch in January 2023.

Ralph Swick has agreed to be Interim CEO until a permanent CEO is named by the Board of Directors which initiated critical functions of W3C Inc. starting in October 2022. Ralph who joined W3C in January 1997 to work on privacy, semantic web and RDF, is W3C’s Chief Operating Officer since 2010 and previously acted as Interim CEO in June 2009.

Farewell and best wishes to Jeff!

W3C calls for nominations in the election for the Board of Directors of W3C, Inc.

handshakeW3C today called for nominations by W3C Members for people to stand for election in the Board of Directors of W3C, Incorporated. The election is scheduled to begin in a month.

W3C Members will compose a majority of the voting seats of the Board of Directors, to bring a diverse multi-stakeholder perspective from the W3C Membership. The Board of Directors Job Description has more details.

Nominations are listed publicly, as they are made.