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2008-09-14: Before a gathering of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation in Washington, D.C. (USA), Tim Berners-Lee announced today the creation of the World Wide Web Foundation. The mission of the Foundation is:
Following Berners-Lee's speech, Alberto Ibargüen, Knight Foundation's president and CEO, announced a $5 million seed grant in support of the mission. Learn more about the World Wide Web Foundation at www.webfoundation.org, which also includes a FAQ and video and photos from the event. (Permalink)
2008-09-19: The number of location-aware Web devices has increased dramatically as of late: built-in Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers and mobile phone tower triangulation services have made mobile phones location-aware, Wifi triangulation services brings location information to Wifi enabled devices, GPS receivers now have Web connectivity. Location, location, location!
Thus far there has been no standard method for these devices to make their location available to Web applications, and so in response to requests from the community W3C has created the new Geolocation Working Group, which is chartered to develop a standardized interface to provide location information to Web applications and thus enable an exciting new class applications. This new group is part of W3C's Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity. (Permalink)
2008-09-19: The Web Applications Working Group has published the Last Call Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: 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. Typical examples of widgets include clocks, CPU gauges, sticky notes, battery-life indicators, games, and widgets that make use of Web services, like weather forecasters, news readers, e-mail checkers, photo albums and currency converters. This document lists the design goals and requirements that specifications would need to address in order to standardize various aspects of widgets. Comments are welcome through 13 October. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. (Permalink)
2008-09-19: The Efficient XML Interchange Working Group has published the Last Call Working Draft of Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) Format 1.0. EXI is a very compact representation for the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Information Set that is intended to simultaneously optimize performance and the utilization of computational resources. The EXI format uses a hybrid approach drawn from the information and formal language theories, plus practical techniques verified by measurements, for entropy encoding XML information. Using a relatively simple algorithm, which is amenable to fast and compact implementation, and a small set of data types, it reliably produces efficient encodings of XML event streams. Comments are welcome through 07 November. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. (Permalink)
2008-09-17: The WebCGM Working Group has published the First Public Last Call Working Draft of WebCGM 2.1. Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM) is an ISO standard, defined by ISO/IEC 8632:1999, for the interchange of 2D vector and mixed vector/raster graphics. WebCGM is a profile of CGM, which adds Web linking and is optimized for Web applications in technical illustration, electronic documentation, geophysical data visualization, and similar fields. First published (1.0) in 1999, WebCGM unifies potentially diverse approaches to CGM utilization in Web document applications. It therefore represents a significant interoperability agreement amongst major users and implementers of the ISO CGM standard. Comments are welcome through 01 November. Learn more about the Graphics Activity. (Permalink)
2008-09-15: The SVG Working Group has published the Last Call Working Draft of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Tiny 1.2 Specification. This specification defines the features and syntax for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Tiny, Version 1.2, a language for describing two-dimensional vector and mixed vector/raster graphics in XML. Its goal is to provide the ability to create a whole range of graphical content, from static images to animations to interactive Web applications. SVG Tiny 1.2 is a profile of SVG intended for implementation on a range of devices, from cellphones and PDAs to desktop and laptop computers. Comments are welcome through 13 October. Learn more about the W3C Graphics Activity. (Permalink)
2008-09-12: The Web Applications Working Group has published a Working Draft of Access Control for Cross-Site Requests. Other specifications that wish to enable cross-siterequests in an API they define can use the algorithms defined by this specification. If such an API is used on http://example.org resources, a resource on http://hello-world.example can opt in using the mechanism described by this specification. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. (Permalink)
2008-09-12: The Service Modeling Language Working Group has published the Last Call Working Drafts of Service Modeling Language, Version 1.1 and Service Modeling Language Interchange Format Version 1.1. The former specification defines the Service Modeling Language, Version 1.1 (SML) used to model complex services and systems, including their structure, constraints, policies, and best practices. The latter defines the interchange format for SML 1.1. This format identifies the model being interchanged, distinguishes between model definition documents and model instance documents, and defines the binding of rule documents with other documents in the interchange model. Comments are welcome through 03 October. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. (Permalink)
2008-09-10: The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Working Draft of CSS Backgrounds and Borders Module Level 3. CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML). This draft contains the features of CSS level 3 relating to borders and backgrounds. It includes and extends the functionality of CSS level 2. The main extensions compared to level 2 are borders consisting of images, boxes with multiple backgrounds, boxes with rounded corners and boxes with shadows. Learn more about the Style Activity. (Permalink)
2008-09-10: The XML Schema Working Group has published a Working Draft of W3C XML Schema Definition Language (XSD): Component Designators. This document defines a system for designating XML Schema components. Schema components are the building blocks that comprise the abstract data model of the schema. They are specified by XML Schema Part 1: Structures and XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes. The XSD specification divides the problem of constructing schema component designators into two parts: defining a designator for an assembled schema, and defining a designator for a particular schema component or schema components, understood relative to a designated schema. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. (Permalink)
2008-09-08: The Evaluation and Repair Tools Working Group today published Representing Content in RDF as a First Public Working Draft. This document provides a vocabulary to represent content in RDF, and is flexible for any type of content available on the Web or in local storage media. The Working Group also published an an updated Working Draft of HTTP Vocabulary in RDF, which defines terms to allow HTTP headers that have been exchanged between a client and a server to be recorded in RDF. These documents can be used to extend the Evaluation and Report Language (EARL) 1.0 Schema, an RDF vocabulary to record test results such as those generated by Web accessibility evaluation tools. They are part of the EARL Specification. Learn more about the Web Accessibility Initiative. (Permalink)
2008-09-04: The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group and XHTML2 Working Group have published the Proposed Recommendation of RDFa in XHTML: Syntax and Processing. The modern Web is made up of an enormous number of documents that have been created using HTML. These documents contain significant amounts of structured data, which is largely unavailable to tools and applications. When publishers can express this data more completely, and when tools can read it, a new world of user functionality becomes available, letting users transfer structured data between applications and web sites, and allowing browsing applications to improve the user experience. RDFa is a specification for attributes to express structured data in any markup language. The groups have also published an implementation report as part of the Candidate Recommendation phase. Comments are welcome through 03 October. Learn more about the Semantic Web. (Permalink)
2008-09-03: The Efficient XML Interchange Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) Impacts. EXI defines a new representation for the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Information Set. The introduction of such a format may cause disruption in systems that have so far been able to assume XML as the only representation of XML Information Set data. This document reviews areas where the introduction of EXI may disrupt or otherwise have an impact on existing XML technologies, XML processors, and applications. It also describes EXI design features and steps that may be taken by implementors to reduce or eliminate disruption and impacts. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. (Permalink)
2008-09-01: Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel. (Permalink)
2008-08-29: The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group has published the Last Call Working Draft of SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System Reference. This document defines the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS), a common data model for sharing and linking knowledge organization systems via the Web. The SKOS data model provides a standard, low-cost migration path for porting existing knowledge organization systems to the Semantic Web. SKOS also provides a light weight, intuitive language for developing and sharing new knowledge organization systems. It may be used on its own, or in combination with formal knowledge representation languages such as the Web Ontology language (OWL). Comments are welcome through 03 October. The group has also published an update of the companion SKOS Primer. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)
2008-08-29: The Web Applications Working Group has published the Working Draft of Web IDL. This specification defines a syntactic subset of OMG IDL version 3.0 for use by specifications that define interfaces. Web IDL is an IDL variant with a number of features that allow the behavior of common script objects in the web platform to be specified more readily. A number of extensions are given to the IDL to support common functionality that previously must have been written in prose. In addition, precise language bindings for ECMAScript 3rd Edition and Java are given. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. (Permalink)
2008-08-29: The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group has published the Group Note of Best Practice Recipes for Publishing RDF Vocabularies. This document describes best practice recipes for publishing vocabularies or ontologies on the Web (in RDF Schema or OWL). It is intended for the creators and maintainers of vocabularies in RDFS and OWL (vocabulary and ontology are used interchangeably in the context of this specification). It provides step-by-step instructions for publishing vocabularies on the Web, giving example configurations designed to cover the most common cases. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)
2008-08-18: The Voice Browser Working Group has published the Proposed Recommendation of Pronunciation Lexicon Specification (PLS) Version 1.0. PLS provides the basis for describing pronunciation information for use in speech recognition and speech synthesis, for use in tuning applications, e.g., for proper names that have irregular pronunciations. Changes from the previous Working Draft can be found in Appendix D of the specification. Comments are welcome through 18 September. Learn more about the Voice Browser Activity. (Permalink)
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