The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential. W3C is a forum for information, commerce, communication, and collective understanding. On this page, you'll find W3C news, links to W3C technologies and ways to get involved. New visitors can find help in Finding Your Way at W3C. We encourage organizations to learn more about W3C and about W3C Membership.
To celebrate ten years of XML, W3C invites you to send a greeting and tell us about an XML-related blog or article. Many thanks to the FLWOR Foundation for their generous sponsorship of XML10.
Help W3C by making a donation through the W3C Supporters Program.
Current job opportunities at W3C: Web Accessibility Engineer; Web Accessibility and Ageing Consultant. Current W3C Fellows Program openings are Business and Technology Communications Specialist, Web / Graphic Designer, and Software Engineer.
2008-02-19: The report of the W3C Video on the Web Workshop is now available. Thirty-seven organizations discussed video and audio codecs, spatial and temporal addressing, metadata, digital rights management, accessibility, and other topics related to ensuring the success of video as a "first class citizen" of the Web. W3C thanks Cisco for hosting the Workshop, which took place 12-13 December 2007 simultaneously in San Jose, California and Brussels, Belgium. Read the forty-two position papers and Workshop minutes. W3C welcomes feedback on the Report and the topic of video on the Web at public-video-comments@w3.org (archive). (Photo credit: Bob Freund. Permalink)
2008-03-03: The Web API Working Group has published the Last Call Working Draft of Element Traversal Specification. This specification defines the ElementTraversal interface, which allows script navigation of the elements of a DOM tree, excluding all other nodes in the DOM, such as text nodes. It is intended to provide a more convenient alternative to existing DOM navigation interfaces, with a low implementation footprint. Comments are welcome through 3 April. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. (Permalink)
2008-03-03: The Service Modeling Language Working Group has published Last Call Working Drafts of Service Modeling Language, Version 1.1 and Service Modeling Language Interchange Format, Version 1.1. The former defines a language for modeling complex services and systems, including their structure, constraints, policies, and best practices. The latter defines an interchange format for SML. The 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 set. Comments are welcome through 26 March. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. (Permalink)
2008-03-03: Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel. (Permalink)
2008-02-25: Today representatives from W3C Offices, regional branches that promote W3C and interact with participants in local languages, celebrate ten years of the Offices program. Offices currently represent 17 regions around the globe, helping to organize meetings, recruit Members, translate materials, and find creative ways to encourage international participation in W3C work. Offices staff gather for a face-to-face meeting in Sophia-Antipolis France to review ten years of experience and to forge improvements to the program. At this occasion, W3C thanks the Offices staff past and present for all of their work! (Permalink)
2008-02-25: The Web API Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of XMLHttpRequest Level 2. XMLHttpRequest Level 2 enhances XMLHttpRequest with new features, such as cross-site requests, progress events, and the handling of byte streams for both sending and receiving. Learn more about the W3C Rich Web Client Activity. (Permalink)
2008-02-25: The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of CSSOM View Module. The APIs introduced by this specification provide authors with a way to inspect and manipulate the view information of a document. This includes getting the position of element layout boxes, obtaining the width of the viewport through script, and also scrolling an element. Learn more about the Style Activity. (Permalink)
2008-02-25: Position papers are due 20 April for the W3C Workshop on the Role of Mobile Technologies in Fostering Social Development on 2-3 June 2008 in São Paulo, Brazil. W3C thanks Workshop hosts NIC.br (Network Information Center), CGI.br Internet Steering Committee, and Institute CONIP. The goal of the Workshop is to understand specific challenges of using mobile phones and Web technologies to deliver services to underprivileged populations of Developing Countries. The Workshop scope includes: analysis of using mobile phones in development projects; strengths and weaknesses of SMS technology v. mobile Web v. voice technology; the challenges of integrating information and Communication Technologies in rural communities, and more. Read about W3C Workshops. (Permalink)
2008-02-21: The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group and the XHTML 2 Working Group have published the Last Call Working Draft of RDFa in XHTML: Syntax and Processing. RDFa is a specification for attributes to be used with languages such as HTML and XHTML to express structured data. When publishers can express structured data, 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. For example, a photo's creator, camera setting information, resolution, location and topic can be published as easily as the original photo itself, enabling structured search and sharing. With RDFa, the rendered, hypertext data of XHTML is reused, so that publishers don't need to repeat significant data in the document content. The RDFa specification explains use of the RDFa attributes with XHTML. Comments are welcome through 21 March. Learn more about XHTML and the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)
2008-02-21: The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System Primer. SKOS provides a model for expressing the basic structure and content of concept schemes such as thesauri, classification schemes, subject heading lists, taxonomies, folksonomies, and other types of controlled vocabulary. SKOS has been designed to provide a low-cost migration path for porting existing organization systems to the Semantic Web. The primer is intended to help implementors who have a basic understanding of the Semantic Web to use the capabilities defined in SKOS Reference to represent and publish their concept schemes as SKOS data. The Primer aims to provide introductory examples and guidance in the use of SKOS vocabulary features. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)
2008-02-15: The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published the Last Call Working Draft of CSS Namespaces Module. The CSS Namespaces module defines the syntax for using namespaces in CSS. It defines the @namespace rule for declaring the default namespace and binding namespaces to namespace prefixes, and it also defines a syntax that other specifications can adopt for using those prefixes in namespace-qualified names. Comments are welcome through 7 March. Learn more about the Style Activity. (Permalink)
2008-02-14: The Web Application Formats Working Group has published the Working Draft of Access Control for Cross-site Requests. Web application technologies commonly apply same-origin restrictions to network requests. These restrictions prevent a Web application running from one origin from obtaining data retrieved from another origin, and also limit the amount of unsafe HTTP requests that can be automatically launched toward destinations that differ from the running application's origin. This document defines a mechanism to enable client-side cross-site requests. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. (Permalink)
2008-02-13: The Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Working Group has published a Group Note of Best Practices for XML Internationalization. This document provides a set of guidelines for developing XML documents and schemas that are internationalized properly. Following the best practices describes here allow both the developer of XML applications, as well as the author of XML content to create material in different languages. Learn more about the Internationalization Activity. (Permalink)
2008-02-12: Ten years ago, on 10 February 1998, W3C published Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation. W3C is marking the ten-year anniversary of XML by celebrating "XML10" and extending thanks to the dedicated communities -- including people who have participated in W3C's XML groups and mailing lists, the SGML community, and xml-dev -- whose efforts have created a successful family of technologies based on the solid XML 1.0 foundation. The success of XML is a strong indicator of how dedicated individuals, working within the W3C Process, can engage with a larger community to produce industry-changing results. "Today we celebrate the success of open standards in preserving Web data from proprietary ownership," said Jon Bosak, who led the W3C Working Group that produced XML 1.0. Read the press release and testimonials. Send W3C a greeting and learn more about XML at W3C. (Permalink)
2008-02-08: W3C invites Web content authors to run the beta release of the W3C mobileOK checker and make their content work on a broad range of mobile devices. This new version provides more accurate results and a more reliable experience. Visitors of the Mobile World Congress (in Barcelona, starting Monday, 11 February) are welcome to stop by the W3C Mobile Web Initiative booth (in Hall 7) to learn more about this tool for making Web sites mobile-friendly. (Permalink)
2008-02-06: The XML Core Working Group has published the Proposed Edited Recommendation of Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fifth Edition). This revision of XML 1.0 incorporates all known errata for XML 1.0 Fourth Edition; see the diff-marked specification for changes. This version of the XML 1.0 specification contains one major change, to the definition of names, bringing one major benefit of XML 1.1 into XML 1.0; please read the background for this change as part of any review. Comments are welcome through 16 May. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. (Permalink)
2008-02-04: The Protocols and Formats Working Group published First Public Working Drafts of:
WAI-ARIA defines a way to make Web content and Web applications more accessible to people with disabilities. It especially helps with dynamic content and advanced user interface controls developed with Ajax, HTML, JavaScript, and related technologies. An updated WAI-ARIA Roadmap was also published.
Additionally, the Education and Outreach Working Group published a new WAI-ARIA FAQ and updated WAI-ARIA Overview. Read the Call for Review: New WAI-ARIA Documents announcement and about the Web Accessibility Initiative. (Permalink)
AgileDelta provides software for building compelling mobile applications for mass market devices that access and interact with Internet and enterprise-based services. AgileDelta supports the W3C's efforts on XML and Web services standards, which are key components in AgileDelta's products. (Member testimonials)
W3C would like to thank the Supporters who have contributed financially or through a donation of goods to W3C.
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