Call for Participation in Offline URL Community Group

The Offline URL Community Group has been launched:

Currently a file URL (file:///) is the defined way to access a local file in a browser. For various reasons (some outdated) this is not a preferred mechanism. There have been several unsuccessful attempts to create an alternative, but these were focused on application-type functionality and not content.

For content originally created in HTML, it makes the most sense to offer a mechanism to store the file locally in the same format. While, if this is desired, that process is the responsibility of the site, the browser functionality for it must be a recognized standard.

This initiative is focused on creating an offline url standard to access HTML files and containers stored locally in a compressed format, but otherwise behave as close to possible as an online site accessed via http.

The charter for this group is currently under development on GitHub. If you are interested please follow and contribute there.

In order to join the group, you will need a W3C account. Please note, however, that W3C Membership is not required to join a Community Group.

This is a community initiative. This group was originally proposed on 2016-08-16 by Mike Perlman. The following people supported its creation: Mike Perlman, Puneeth N, Stephen James Morris, jpoker net, Alberto Pettarin. W3C’s hosting of this group does not imply endorsement of the activities.

The group must now choose a chair. Read more about how to get started in a new group and good practice for running a group.

We invite you to share news of this new group in social media and other channels.

If you believe that there is an issue with this group that requires the attention of the W3C staff, please email us at site-comments@w3.org

Thank you,
W3C Community Development Team