WOFF File Format 1.0 is a W3C Recommendation The WebFonts Working Group has published a W3C Recommendation of WOFF File Format 1.0. This document specifies the WOFF font packaging format. This format was designed to provide lightweight, easy-to-implement compression of font data, suitable for use with CSS @font-face rules. Any properly licensed TrueType/OpenType/Open Font Format file can be packaged in WOFF format for Web use. User agents decode the WOFF file to restore the font data such that it will display identically to the input font. Learn more about the Fonts Activity.

Call for Review: Selectors API Level 1 Proposed Recommendation Published The Web Applications Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of Selectors API Level 1. Selectors, which are widely used in CSS, are patterns that match against elements in a tree structure. The Selectors API specification defines methods for retrieving Element nodes from the DOM by matching against a group of selectors. It is often desirable to perform DOM operations on a specific set of elements in a document. These methods simplify the process of acquiring specific elements, especially compared with the more verbose techniques defined and used in the past. Comments are welcome through 25 January. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Last Call: CSS Conditional Rules Module Level 3 The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of CSS Conditional Rules Module Level 3. This module contains the features of CSS for conditional processing of parts of style sheets, conditioned on capabilities of the processor or the document the style sheet is being applied to. It includes and extends the functionality of CSS level 2, which builds on CSS level 1. The main extensions compared to level 2 are allowing nesting of certain at-rules inside ‘@media’, and the addition of the ‘@supports’ rule for conditional processing. Comments are welcome through 10 January. Learn more about the Style Activity.

Content Security Policy 1.1 Draft Published The Web Application Security Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Content Security Policy 1.1. This document defines a policy language used to declare a set of content restrictions for a web resource, and a mechanism for transmitting the policy from a server to a client where the policy is enforced. Learn more about the Security Activity.

HTML+RDFa 1.1 Draft Published The RDFa Working Group and the HTML Working Group have published a Working Draft of HTML+RDFa 1.1. This specification defines rules and guidelines for adapting the RDFa Core 1.1 and RDFa Lite 1.1 specifications for use in HTML5 and XHTML5. The rules defined in this specification not only apply to HTML5 documents in non-XML and XML mode, but also to HTML4 and XHTML documents interpreted through the HTML5 parsing rules. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity, and the HTML Activity.

Web Audio API and Web MIDI API Drafts Published The Audio Working Group has published two Working Drafts today: Web Audio API. This specification describes a high-level JavaScript API for processing and synthesizing audio in web applications. The primary paradigm is of an audio routing graph, where a number of AudioNode objects are connected together to define the overall audio rendering. The actual processing will primarily take place in the underlying implementation (typically optimized Assembly / C / C++ code), but direct JavaScript processing and synthesis is also supported.

Audio Working Group has published a Working Draft of Web MIDI API. This specification defines an API supporting the MIDI protocol, enabling web applications to enumerate and select MIDI input and output devices on the client system and send and receive MIDI messages. It is intended to enable non-music MIDI applications as well as music ones, by providing low-level access to the MIDI devices available on the users' systems. At the same time, the Web MIDI API is not intended to become a semantic controller platform; it is designed to expose the mechanics of MIDI input and output interfaces, and the practical aspects of sending and receiving MIDI messages, without identifying what those actions might mean semantically. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

W3C Report on Web and Automotive Workshop: Shift into High Gear on the Web W3C today published the report of the W3C Web and Automotive Workshop: Shift into High Gear on the Web, hosted by Intel on 14-15 November 2012 in Rome, Italy, and sponsored by QNX and Webinos. This workshop provided a way for the participants to focus on opportunities and challenges for exploiting Web technologies within the car, and what kinds of standards work may be needed to realize the potential. The Workshop participants reached a broad consensus that HTML5 is a compelling basis for automotive, and that it is now timely to launch standardization of user centric vehicle APIs in order to avoid the risk of fragmentation from competing approaches. Other aspects were identified, such as safety, network and devices integration, business and advertising. The Workshop prioritized work on use cases and requirements, security/policy mechanisms, a user centric vehicle API and a reference model. The next steps are likely to include further outreach with the aim of launching a standards activity; W3C staff will work with stakeholders to identify opportunities for launching work in support of standards for Web and Automotive.

OWL 2 (Second Edition) is a W3C Recommendation The OWL Working Group has published the Second Edition of the OWL 2 ontology language as a W3C Edited Recommendation. OWL 2, part of W3C's Semantic Web toolkit, allows people to capture knowledge about a particular application domain (e.g, energy or medicine) and then use tools to manage information, search through it, and learn more from it. The second edition corrects several minor errors in the specification and also clarifies the relationship between OWL 2 and Datatypes defined in Part 2 of the XML Schema Definition Language (XSD) 1.1 (now a Recommendation). The standard consists of 13 documents, of which 4 are instructional. Learn more about the Semantic Web.

W3C Invites Implementations of PROV The Provenance Working Group has published four Candidate Recommendation Documents along with corresponding supporting notes. You can find a complete list at the PROV Overview draft. These document provide a framework for interchanging provenance on the Web. PROV enables one to represent and interchange provenance information using widely available formats such as RDF and XML. In addition, it provides definitions for accessing provenance information, validating it, and mapping to Dublin Core. The release of these Candidate Recommendation documents is a signal to developers that the Working Group believes that each specification is ready for implementation. Although there are already a number of implementations around, the Provenance Working Group kindly asks for developers across the Web to implement the specification and provide implementation feedback. You can contact the group directly through the public comments mailing list. You are also encouraged to fill out one of group's surveys about your usage of PROV. Learn more about the Semantic Web.

Pointer Events Draft Published The Pointer Events Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Pointer Events. This document defines events and related interfaces for handling hardware agnostic pointer input from devices like a mouse, pen, or touchscreen. For compatibility with existing mouse-based content, this specification also describes a mapping to fire DOM Level 3 Events Mouse Events for pointer device types other than mouse. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

W3C Invites Implementations of Server-Sent Events The Web Applications Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Server-Sent Events. This specification defines an API for opening an HTTP connection for receiving push notifications from a server in the form of DOM events. The API is designed such that it can be extended to work with other push notification schemes such as Push SMS. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

CSS Fonts Module Level 3 Draft Published The CSS Working Group published a Working Draft of CSS Fonts Module Level 3. This CSS3 module describes how font properties are specified and how font resources are loaded dynamically. The contents of this specification are a consolidation of content previously divided into CSS3 Fonts and CSS3 Web Fonts modules. Learn more about the Style Activity.

Last Call: Proximity Events The Device APIs Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Proximity Events. This specification defines a means to receive events that correspond to a proximity sensor detecting the presence of a physical object. Comments are welcome through 24 January. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity.

Last Call: Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Version 2.0 The MultilingualWeb-LT Working Group published a Last Call Working Draft of Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Version 2.0. This document defines data categories and their implementation as a set of elements and attributes called the Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) 2.0. ITS 2.0 is the successor of ITS 1.0; it is designed to foster the creation of multilingual Web content, focusing on HTML, XML based formats in general, and to leverage localization workflows based on the XML Localization Interchange File Format (XLIFF). Comments are welcome through 10 January 2013. Learn more about the Internationalization Activity.

Registration Opens for W3Conf 2013, W3C's Developer Conference W3C announces today W3Conf: Practical Standards for Web Professionals, W3C's second annual developer conference, in San Francisco on 21-22 February 2013. Presentations will focus on practical, cutting-edge standards that developers and designers can use across browsers today, and give a glimpse into what's coming. The conference will feature leading experts in the Web industry on HTML5, CSS, graphics, mobiles, accessibility, multimedia, APIs, and more. Space is limited, so register now.

W3C Appoints Peter Swire New Co-Chair for Do Not Track Standard Today the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announces the appointment of Peter Swire as co-Chair of the Tracking Protection Working Group. The group is working to define the Do Not Track protocol, and to establish agreement about what compliance with the Do Not Track signal will mean in practice. A law professor at the Ohio State University and veteran of the Clinton and Obama administrations (in the US), Swire brings significant experience in consensus-building and broad expertise on privacy matters to the table. "W3C's Do Not Track process is designed to foster an Internet that users globally can trust," said Swire, "with consumer choice, transparency about privacy practices, and continued innovation that brings diverse content to all those who use the Internet." Read the full press release and participant quotes.

Online Symposium: Easy-to-Read on the Web Registration is now open for the online symposium on Easy-to-Read on the Web to be held on 3 December 2012. Researchers, practitioners, content authors, designers, developers, users with disabilities, and others are invited to participate. The symposium will address how to make information on the Web easier to understand, particularly by people with cognitive disabilities and people with low language skills. The symposium will explore user needs and the state of the art in research, development, and practice to contribute to a common understanding of easy-to-read on the Web. For details and registration, see Easy-to-Read on the Web - Online Symposium. Learn more about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

W3C Launches Pointer Events Working Group W3C announced today the launch of the Pointer Events Working Group. Web browsers can receive input in a variety of ways. A “pointer” is an abstract form of input that can be any point of contact on a input surface made by a mouse cursor, pen, finger, or multiple fingers. The mission of this group is to define a single unified event model for mouse, touch, and pen/tablet user interfaces. Enabling content creators to use a single model for different input types will make content creation more efficient and inclusive. See the Pointer Events Working Group Charter for more information.

Agenda, Papers Announced for Web and Automotive Workshop W3C announced today the agenda and accepted papers for Shift into High Gear on the Web, W3C's first Web and Automotive Workshop, hosted by Intel Open Source Technology Center, in Rome, Italy on 14-15 November. People today enjoy applications and services from multiple networked devices. With our increasingly mobile lifestyles, it’s time to include the connected car in this mix. Participants in this workshop will share their own perspectives, requirements, and ideas to ensure that emerging global technology standards meet the needs of the Web and Automotive industries. The Workshop is also supported through sponsorships from QNX and Webinos.

Online Symposium: Text Customization for Readability Registration is now open for the online symposium on Text Customization for Readability to be held on 19 November 2012. This symposium brings together researchers, practitioners, and users with disabilities to explore the needs of people with low vision, dyslexia, and other conditions and situations that impact reading. It focuses specifically on text customization requirements and functionality, that is, providing users the ability to change (or personalize) specific aspects of text display to improve readability for their particular needs. For details and registration, see Text Customization for Readability - Online Symposium. To share your perspectives on text customization for readability, see Invitation for short contributions. Learn more about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

CSS Grid Layout Draft Published The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Working Draft of CSS Grid Layout. Grid Layout contains features targeted at web application authors. The Grid can be used to achieve many different layouts. It excels at dividing up space for major regions of an application, or defining the relationship in terms of size, position, and layer between parts of a control built from HTML primitives. Like tables, the Grid enables an author to align elements into columns and rows, but unlike tables, the Grid doesn't have content structure, and thus enables a wide variety of layouts not possible with tables. In addition, the absence of content structure in the Grid helps to manage changes to layout by using fluid and source order independent layout techniques. By combining media queries with the CSS properties that control layout of the Grid and its children, authors can adapt their layout to changes in device form factors, orientation, and available space, without needing to alter the semantic nature of their content. Learn more about the Style Activity.

W3C Community Convenes in France for TPAC 2012 This week, the W3C community meets in Lyon, France for TPAC 2012 W3C's annual face-to-face Membership meeting. Participants will coordinate technical directions for the Open Web Platform, explore its impact across industries and devices, and discuss organizational strategy. More than 450 people will participate in Working Group meetings, an Advisory Committee meeting, and a Plenary Day for breakout discussions on a a variety of topics. Although participation in TPAC is limited to those already in W3C groups, the TPAC proceedings are public and will be made available shortly after the meeting. Follow the meeting on social networking sites with tag #tpac. W3C also welcomes local developers today to a Meetup at the Lyon City Hall.

Last Call: Publishing and Linking on the Web The Technical Architecture Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Publishing and Linking on the Web. Publishing a page on the Web is fundamentally different from printing and distributing a page in a magazine or book. This document is intended to inform future social and legal discussions of the Web by clarifying the ways in which the Web's technical facilities operate to store, publish and retrieve information, and by providing definitions for terminology as used within the Web's technical community. This document also describes the technical and operational impact that does or could result from legal constraints on publishing, linking and transformation on the Web. Comments are welcome through 13 December. Learn more about the Technical Architecture Group.

File API Draft Published The Web Applications Working Group has published a Working Draft of File API. Web applications should have the ability to manipulate as wide as possible a range of user input, including files that a user may wish to upload to a remote server or manipulate inside a rich web application. This specification defines the basic representations for files, lists of files, errors raised by access to files, and programmatic ways to read files. Additionally, this specification also defines an interface that represents "raw data" which can be asynchronously processed on the main thread of conforming user agents. The interfaces and API defined in this specification can be used with other interfaces and APIs exposed to the Open Web Platform. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Filter Effects 1.0 Draft Published The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Filter Effects 1.0. Filter effects are a way of processing an element's rendering before it is displayed in the document. Typically, rendering an element via CSS or SVG can conceptually described as if the element, including its children, are drawn into a buffer (such as a raster image) and then that buffer is composited into the elements parent. Filters apply an effect before the compositing stage. Examples of such effects are blurring, changing color intensity and warping the image. Learn more about the Style Activity.

Last Call: Best Practices for Fragment Identifiers and Media Type Definitions The Technical Architecture Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Best Practices for Fragment Identifiers and Media Type Definitions. Fragment identifiers (fragids) within URIs are specified as being interpreted based on the media type of a representation. Media type definitions therefore have to provide details about how fragids are interpreted for that media type. This document recommends best practices for the authors of media type definitions, for the authors of structured syntax suffix registrations (such as +xml), for the authors of specifications that define fragid structures, and for authors that publish documents that are intended to be used with fragids or who refer to fragments within documents using URIs with fragids. Comments are welcome through 13 December. Learn more about the Technical Architecture Group.

Web MIDI API Draft Published The Audio Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Web MIDI API. This specification defines an API supporting the MIDI protocol, enabling web applications to enumerate and select MIDI input and output devices on the client system and send and receive MIDI messages. It is intended to enable non-music MIDI applications as well as music ones, by providing low-level access to the MIDI devices available on the users' systems. At the same time, the Web MIDI API is not intended to become a semantic controller platform; it is designed to expose the mechanics of MIDI input and output interfaces, and the practical aspects of sending and receiving MIDI messages, without identifying what those actions might mean semantically. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

W3C Workshop: Electronic Books and the Open Web Platform W3C announced today a Workshop on Electronic Books and the Open Web Platform, 11-12 February 2013, in New York (USA). The event is hosted by O'Reilly and collocated with the O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference (TOC 2013).Today’s eBook market is dynamic, fast-changing and strong. eBooks compete with printed versions, and there is a wide choice of hardware and software available for eBook readers. Nevertheless, publishers face major business and technical challenges in this market, some of which could be reduced or removed by standardization. Participants in this workshop will have the opportunity to share their own perspectives, requirements, and ideas to ensure that emerging global technology standards meet the needs of the eBook industry. W3C membership is not required to participate. All participants are required to submit a statement of interest by 10 December 2012.

Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Version 2.0 Draft Published The MultilingualWeb-LT Working Group has published a Working Draft of Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Version 2.0. This document defines data categories and their implementation as a set of elements and attributes called the Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) 2.0. ITS 2.0 is designed to foster the creation of multilingual Web content, focusing on HTML5, XML based formats in general, and to leverage localization workflows based on the XML Localization Interchange File Format (XLIFF), and language technology applications like machine translation or named entity annotation. In addition to HTML5 and XML, algorithms to convert ITS attributes to NIF is provided. Learn more about the Internationalization Activity.

Last Call: Server-Sent Events The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Server-Sent Events. This specification defines an API for opening an HTTP connection for receiving push notifications from a server in the form of DOM events. The API is designed such that it can be extended to work with other push notification schemes such as Push SMS. Comments are welcome through 13 November. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Last Call: An organization ontology The Government Linked Data Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of An organization ontology. This document describes a core ontology for organizational structures, aimed at supporting linked data publishing of organizational information across a number of domains. It is designed to allow domain-specific extensions to add classification of organizations and roles, as well as extensions to support neighbouring information such as organizational activities. Comments are welcome through 25 November. Learn more about the eGovernment Activity.

Push API Draft Published The Web Applications Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Push API. This specification defines a “Push API” that provides webapps with scripted access to server-sent application data, for simplicity referred to here as "Push messages" as delivered by "Push services". Push services are a way for application servers to send messages to webapps, whether or not the webapp is active in a browser window. The specific method to be used by a webapp is either selected by the user through selecting a Web Intent Push Service provider, or by the browser. The Push API is defined to promote compatibility with any underlying delivery method. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Shadow DOM Draft Published The Web Applications Working Group has published a Working Draft of Shadow DOM. This specification describes a method of establishing and maintaining functional boundaries between DOM subtrees and how these subtrees interact with each other within a document tree, thus enabling better functional encapsulation within DOM. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Call for Review: WOFF File Format 1.0 Proposed Recommendation Published The WebFonts Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of WOFF File Format 1.0. This document specifies the WOFF font packaging format. This format was designed to provide lightweight, easy-to-implement compression of font data, suitable for use with CSS @font-face rules. Any properly licensed TrueType/OpenType/Open Font Format file can be packaged in WOFF format for Web use. User agents decode the WOFF file to restore the font data such that it will display identically to the input font. Comments are welcome through 08 November. Learn more about the Fonts Activity.

Microdata to RDF Note Published The Semantic Web Interest Group has published a Group Note of Microdata to RDF. HTML microdata is an extension to HTML used to embed machine-readable data into HTML documents. Whereas the microdata specification describes a means of markup, the output format is JSON. This specification describes processing rules that may be used to extract RDF from an HTML document containing microdata. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

CSS Counter Styles Level 3 Draft Published The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of CSS Counter Styles Level 3. This module introduces the ‘@counter-style’ rule, which allows authors to define their own custom counter styles for use with CSS list-marker and generated-content counters. It also predefines a set of common counter styles, including the ones present in CSS2 and CSS2.1. CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, in speech, etc. Learn more about the Style Activity.

W3C Workshop: Making the Multilingual Web work W3C announced today the sixth MultilingualWeb workshop in a series of events exploring the mechanisms and processes needed to ensure that the World Wide Web lives up to its potential around the world and across barriers of language and culture. To be held 12–13 March 2013 in Rome, this workshop is made possible by the generous support of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. Anyone may attend at no charge and the W3C welcomes participation by both speakers and non-speaking attendees. Early registration is encouraged due to limited space. Building on the success of five highly regarded previous workshops in Madrid, Pisa, Limerick, Luxembourg, and Dublin, this workshop will emphasize the application of theory and technology to meet practical needs. The workshop brings together participants interested in the best practices and standards needed to help content creators, localizers, language tools developers, and others meet the challenges of the multilingual Web. It provides further opportunities for networking across communities that span the various aspects involved. We are particularly interested in speakers who can demonstrate novel solutions for reaching out to a global, multilingual audience. Registration is available online.

Two Drafts Published by the Tracking Protection Working Group The Tracking Protection Working Group has published two Working Drafts today. Tracking Preference Expression (DNT).This specification defines the technical mechanisms for expressing a tracking preference via the DNT request header field in HTTP, via an HTML DOM property readable by embedded scripts, and via properties accessible to various user agent plug-in or extension APIs. It also defines mechanisms for sites to signal whether and how they honor this preference, both in the form of a machine-readable tracking status resource at a well-known location and via a Tk response header field, and a mechanism for allowing the user to approve site-specific exceptions to DNT as desired.

Tracking Compliance and Scope. This specification defines the meaning of a Do Not Track (DNT) preference and sets out practices for websites to comply with this preference. Learn more about the Privacy Activity.

W3C Workshop: Web Performance W3C announced today a Workshop on Web Performance, 8 November, hosted by Google at their Mountain View, California campus. As the Open Web Platform expands, the need for high performance implementation has grown, particularly on mobile devices. Participants will examine a broad range of performance issues and how they might be addressed. There is no fee to participate in this Workshop and W3C Membership is not required. All participants are required to submit a statement of interest by 29 October. Learn more about W3C's Web Performance Working Group, which also invites people to share performance issues via their survey on Open Web Platform Performance Priorities.

Media Fragments URI 1.0 (basic) is a W3C Recommendation The Media Fragments Working Group has published a W3C Recommendation of Media Fragments URI 1.0 (basic). This document describes the Media Fragments 1.0 (basic) specification. It specifies the syntax for constructing media fragment URIs and explains how to handle them when used over the HTTP protocol. The syntax is based on the specification of particular name-value pairs that can be used in URI fragment and URI query requests to restrict a media resource to a certain fragment. Learn more about the Video in the Web Activity.

W3C Renews Audio Working Group W3C announced today the renewal of the Audio Working Group, whose mission is to add advanced sound and music capabilities to the Open Web Platform. The new charter adds a new deliverable, the Web MIDI API, which will provide a bridge between the browser and MIDI capable devices, such as musical instruments and controllers, and has great interest from the MIDI Manufacturers Association. The charter also clarifies the Web Audio API deliverable and timeline. See the Audio Working Group Charter for more information, and read more about the Interaction Domain.

W3C Workshop: Do Not Track and Beyond W3C announced today a Workshop on Do Not Track and Beyond, 26-27 November in Berkeley, California. W3C is currently creating standards that define mechanisms for expressing user preferences around Web tracking. The Working Group has produced drafts of Do Not Track specifications, concurrent with various implementations in browsers and Web sites and heightened press and policymaker attention. At the same time, public awareness of online privacy issues has increased. Workshop participants will discuss the Consortium's next steps in the area of tracking protection and Web privacy. What have we learned from Do Not Track standardization and real-world implementations? What should we look at next and beyond DNT? There is no fee to participate in this Workshop and W3C Membership is not required. All participants are required to submit a position paper by 19 October and space is limited. W3C thanks UC Berkeley and TRUST Science and Technology Center for hosting the meeting, and Yahoo! for sponsoring the event. Learn more about the W3C Privacy Activity.

W3C Invites Implementations of CSS Flexible Box Layout Module The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of CSS Flexible Box Layout Module. The specification describes a CSS box model optimized for user interface design. In the flex layout model, the children of a flex container can be laid out in any direction, and can "flex" their sizes, either growing to fill unused space or shrinking to avoid overflowing the parent. Both horizontal and vertical alignment of the children can be easily manipulated. Nesting of these boxes (horizontal inside vertical, or vertical inside horizontal) can be used to build layouts in two dimensions. Learn more about the Style Activity.

Publishing and Linking on the Web Draft Published The Technical Architecture Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Publishing and Linking on the Web. This document is intended to inform future social and legal discussions of the Web by clarifying the ways in which the Web's technical facilities operate to store, publish and retrieve information, and by providing definitions for terminology as used within the Web's technical community. This document also describes the technical and operational impact that does or could result from legal constraints on publishing, linking and transformation on the Web. Comments should be sent before end of september 2012, for consideration during the upcoming TAG meeting. This is not a deadline, comments can be sent anytime. Learn more about the Technical Architecture Group.

Web Cryptography API Draft Published The Web Cryptography Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Web Cryptography API. This specification describes a JavaScript API for performing basic cryptographic operations in web applications, such as hashing, signature generation and verification, and encryption and decryption. Additionally, it describes an API for applications to generate and/or manage the keying material necessary to perform these operations. Key storage is provided for both temporary and permanent keys. Access to keying material is contingent on the same origin policy. Uses for this API range from user or service authentication, document or code signing, and the confidentiality and integrity of communications. Learn more about the Security Activity.

Simple Delivery Profile for Closed Captions (US) Draft Published The Timed Text Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Simple Delivery Profile for Closed Captions (US). This document defines the behavior expected of a presentation processor using the player constraints for such an online delivery profile. The Simple Online Delivery profile is focused on streamlined delivery of closed captions on the Internet. This interoperability profile supports core TTML features to deliver content originating legacy formats such as CEA-608 and -708 content, and is targeted primarily for delivery in US markets. The Simple Delivery Profile for Closed Captions focuses interoperability using TTML 1.0 to support delivery of closed captions for video content. Other profiles based on TTML 1.0 may target other types of subtitles such as on-screen text or graphics. This interoperability profile is a proper subset of TTML 1.0 plus features required to support US Government closed captioning requirements for online presentation. Learn more about the Video in the Web Activity.

Three drafts published by the CSS Working Group The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published three Working Drafts today. CSS Conditional Rules Module Level 3. This module contains the features of CSS for conditional processing of parts of style sheets, conditioned on capabilities of the processor or the document the style sheet is being applied to. It includes and extends the functionality of CSS level 2, which builds on CSS level 1. The main extensions compared to level 2 are allowing nesting of certain at-rules inside '@media', the addition of the '@supports' and '@document' rules for conditional processing.

CSS Image Values and Replaced Content Module Level 4. This module contains the features of CSS level 4 relating to the <image> type and replaced elements. It includes and extends the functionality of CSS Image Values and Replaced Content Module Level 3. The main extensions compared to level 3 are several additions to the ‘<image>’ type, additions to the ‘<gradient>’ type, extensions to the ‘image()’ function, definitions for interpolating several ‘<image>’ types, and several properties controlling the interaction of replaced elements and CSS's layout models.

CSS Transforms. CSS transforms allows elements styled with CSS to be transformed in two-dimensional or three-dimensional space. This specification is the convergence of the CSS 2D transforms, CSS 3D transforms and SVG transforms specifications. Learn more about the Style Activity.

HTML+RDFa 1.1 Draft Published The RDFa Working Group has published a Working Draft of HTML+RDFa 1.1.This specification defines rules and guidelines for adapting the RDFa Core 1.1 and RDFa Lite 1.1 specifications for use in HTML5 and XHTML5. The rules defined in this specification not only apply to HTML5 documents in non-XML and XML mode, but also to HTML4 and XHTML documents interpreted through the HTML5 parsing rules. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

Last Call: Constraints of the Provenance Data Model The Provenance Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Constraints of the Provenance Data Model. This document defines a subset of PROV instances called valid PROV instances. The intent of validation is ensure that a PROV instance represents a history of objects and their interactions which is consistent, and thus safe to use for the purpose of logical reasoning and other kinds of analysis. Valid PROV instances satisfy certain definitions, inferences, and constraints. These definitions, inferences, and constraints provide a measure of consistency checking for provenance and reasoning over provenance. They can also be used to normalize PROV instances to forms that can easily be compared in order to determine whether two PROV instances are equivalent. Validity and equivalence are also defined for PROV bundles and documents. Comments are welcome through 10 October. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

HTML5 Europe Tour W3C is organizing an HTML5 Tour across Europe from 10 to 20 September 2012. The guest speaker of the tour, Michael Smith, W3C HTML Activity Lead, will present the latest in HTML5 and W3C Open Web Platform. Michael Smith, in his HTML5 Europe Tour, will visit Berlin, Budapest, Amsterdam, Paris, Madrid and Rome. Each stop is organized by the corresponding regional W3C Office. Almost all events are open to the public and free of charge. Find out more about the dates, the locations, the registration pages and the events' agenda in the program.

Shift into High Gear on the Web: Workshop on Web and Automotive W3C announces today a Shift into High Gear on the Web, a Workshop Web and Automotive, 14-15 November 2012, in Rome (Italy). The event is hosted by Intel/OTC (Open Source Technology Center) and sponsored by Webinos. People today enjoy applications and services from multiple networked devices: notebook and desktop computers, smart phones, tablets, and Internet TVs. With our increasingly mobile lifestyles, it’s time to include the connected car in this mix. The Web is the ideal platform to offer a rich range of benefits and value-added services to drivers and passengers. The goal of this workshop is to explore how to make these benefits a reality. W3C invites automotive manufacturers and service providers, wireless carriers, insurance companies, application and solution developers and others to participate in this discussion at the workshop. W3C membership is not required to participate. Please submit a statement of interest by 12 October and learn more about participation. This Workshop has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme.

Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Version 2.0 Draft Published The MultilingualWeb-LT Working Group has published a Working Draft of Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Version 2.0. Content or software that is authored in one language (the source language) is often made available in additional languages or adapted with regard to other cultural aspects. This is done through a process called localization, where the original material is translated and adapted to the target audience. In addition, document formats expressed by schemas may be used by people in different parts of the world, and these people may need special markup to support the local language or script. For example, people authoring in languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, or Urdu need special markup to specify directionality in mixed direction text. ITS 2.0 is a technology to add metadata to Web content, for the benefit of localization, language technologies, and internationalization. Learn more about the Internationalization Activity.

First edition of the Open Data Conference W3C will participate in the first edition of the “Open Data Conference” that will take place on September 27, 2012 in Paris, France. This event with an international dimension will gather public and private decision makers and address some of the pressing challenges facing the Open Data paradigm, such as accountability, privacy, or data licensing. Among the guests are professor Nigel Shadbolt, a “founding father” of Open Data in England, and Arnaud Montebourg, French Minister of Productive Recovery. Daniel Dardailler, W3C Director of International Relations, will speak on the “Open Data and Future Uses” round-table and present W3C’s involvement in the area. Registration is open until 24 September, 2012.

Four drafts updated by the CSS Working Group The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group published four Working Drafts today: CSS Fonts Module Level 3. This CSS3 module describes how font properties are specified and how font resources are loaded dynamically. The contents of this specification are a consolidation of content previously divided into CSS3 Fonts and CSS3 Web Fonts modules.

CSS Regions Module Level 3. The CSS regions module allows content to flow across multiple areas called regions. The regions are not necessarily contiguous in the document order. The CSS regions module provides an advanced content flow mechanism, which can be combined with positioning schemes as defined by other CSS modules such as the Multi-Column Module or the Grid Layout Module to position the regions where content flows.

Selectors Level 4. Selectors are patterns that match against elements in a tree, and as such form one of several technologies that can be used to select nodes in an XML document. Selectors have been optimized for use with HTML and XML, and are designed to be usable in performance-critical code. They are a core component of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), which uses Selectors to bind style properties to elements in the document.

CSS Fragmentation Module Level 3. This module describes the fragmentation model that partitions a flow into pages. It builds on the Page model module and introduces and defines the fragmentation model. It adds functionality for pagination, breaking variable fragment size and orientation, widows and orphans. Learn more about the Style Activity.

WebRTC 1.0: Real-time Communication Between Browsers Draft Published The Web Real-Time Communications Working Group has published a Working Draft of WebRTC 1.0: Real-time Communication Between Browsers. This document defines a set of ECMAScript APIs in WebIDL to allow media to be sent over the network to another browser or device implementing the appropriate set of real-time protocols, and media to be received from another browser or device. This specification is being developed in conjunction with a protocol specification developed by the IETF RTCWEB group and an API specification to get access to local media devices developed by the Media Capture Task Force. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity.

Compositing and Blending 1.0 Draft Published The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Working Groups have published the First Public Working Draft of Compositing and Blending 1.0. Compositing describes how shapes of different elements are combined into a single image. There are various possible approaches for compositing. Previous versions of SVG used Simple Alpha Compositing. In this model, each element is rendered into its own buffer and is then merged with its backdrop using the Porter Duff source-over operator. This specification will define a new compositing model that expands upon the Simple Alpha Compositing model by offering: additional Porter Duff compositing operators; advanced blending modes which allow control of how colors mix in the areas where shapes overlap; and compositing groups. Learn more about the Style and Graphics activities.

Last Call: The WebSocket API The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of The WebSocket API. This specification defines an API that enables Web pages to use the WebSocket protocol (defined by the IETF) for two-way communication with a remote host. Comments are welcome through 30 August. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

'XForms 2.0' and 'XForms 2.0: XPath expression module' Drafts Published The Forms Working Group has published two First Public Working Drafts: XForms 2.0. XForms is an XML markup for a new generation of forms and form-like applications on the Web, integrated into other markup languages, such as XHTML, ODF or SVG. An XForms-based application gathers and processes data using an architecture that separates presentation, purpose and content. XForms accommodates form component reuse, fosters strong data type validation, eliminates unnecessary round-trips to the server, offers device independence and accessibility, and reduces the need for scripting. XForms 2.0 adds support for defining custom functions, variables, a pluggable expression language with extra functions (XPath 2.0), model-based switch and repeat, Attribute Value Templates, consuming and submitting JSON and CSV instance data, amongst other things.

The Forms Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of XForms 2.0: XPath expression module. This module defines how XPath could be used for addressing instance data nodes in binding expressions, to express constraints, and to specify calculations in XForms. This module is based on XPath 2.0, but an XPath 1.0 backwards compatibility mode is provided to ensure that nearly all XPath 1.0 expressions continue to deliver the same result with XPath 2.0. This module also defines the XForms Function Library which contains additional functions that are useful for creating forms. Learn more about the XForms Activity.

Veronica Thom Named W3C Chief Financial Officer W3C has named Veronica Thom its new Chief Financial Officer. In this role, Ms. Thom is responsible for finance, budget, and financial plans and controls. With her combined business/finance background, Ms. Thom will advise W3M on future initiatives. Before joining W3C in July 2012, Ms. Thom served as Vice President for Nordic, Mexico and Australia markets with PartyLite, Inc. a direct selling company of Blyth, Inc. She was responsible for leading these new and emerging markets in sales and marketing, as well as driving profitability.

MBUI - Task Models Draft Published The Model-Based User Interfaces Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of MBUI - Task Models. Task models are useful when designing and developing interactive systems. They describe the logical activities that have to be carried out in order to reach the user’s goals. This document covers the specification of Task Models, with a meta-model expressed in UML, and an XML Schema that can be used as the basis for interchange of Task Models between different user interface development tools. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity.

Web Audio API Draft Published The Audio Working Group has published a Working Draft of Web Audio API. This specification describes a high-level JavaScript API for processing and synthesizing audio in web applications. The primary paradigm is of an audio routing graph, where a number of AudioNode objects are connected together to define the overall audio rendering. The actual processing will primarily take place in the underlying implementation (typically optimized Assembly / C / C++ code), but direct JavaScript processing and synthesis is also supported. This API is designed to be used in conjunction with other APIs and elements on the web platform, notably: XMLHttpRequest (using the responseType and response attributes). For games and interactive applications, it is anticipated to be used with the canvas 2D and WebGL 3D graphics APIs. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Version 2.0 Draft Published The MultilingualWeb-LT Working Group has published a Working Draft of Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Version 2.0. This document defines data categories and their implementation as a set of elements and attributes called the Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) 2.0. ITS 2.0 is the successor of ITS 1.0; it is designed to foster the creation of multilingual Web content, focusing on HTML5, XML based formats in general, and to leverage localization workflows based on the XML Localization Interchange File Format (XLIFF). In addition to HTML5 and XML, algorithms to convert ITS attributes to RDFa and NIF are provided. Learn more about the Internationalization Activity.

This is for Everyone: the Tweet Heard Around the World Tim Berners-Lee, London native, inventor of the World Wide Web and Founder and Director of the W3C was celebrated on stage during the 2012 London Olympics Opening Ceremony on July 27 where he live tweeted 'This is for everyone.' What better venue than the Olympic Games, which inspire young people and bring competitors together, to recognize Berners-Lee's role in history and his continued advocacy that the Web, built on open standards, remains available to everyone, everywhere. Congratulations to Sir Tim! Learn more about Tim Berners-Lee and about W3C.

Best Practices for Fragment Identifiers and Media Type Definitions Draft Published The Technical Architecture Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Best Practices for Fragment Identifiers and Media Type Definitions. Fragment identifiers within URIs are specified as being interpreted based on the media type of a representation. Media type definitions therefore have to provide details about how fragment identifiers are interpreted for that media type. This document recommends best practices for the authors of media type definitions, for the authors of structured syntax suffix definitions (such as +xml), for the authors of specifications that define syntax for fragment identifiers, and for authors that publish documents that are intended to be used with fragment identifiers or who refer to URIs using fragment identifiers. Learn more about the Technical Architecture Group.

Three Provenance Last Call Drafts Published The Provenance Working Group published three Last Call Working Drafts today. Provenance is information about entities, activities, and people involved in producing a piece of data or thing, which can be used to form assessments about its quality, reliability or trustworthiness. PROV-DM: The PROV Data Model introduces the provenance concepts found in PROV and defines PROV-DM types and relations. The PROV data model is domain-agnostic, but is equipped with extensibility points allowing domain-specific information to be included.

PROV-O: The PROV Ontology expresses the PROV Data Model using the OWL2 Web Ontology Language (OWL2). It provides a set of classes, properties, and restrictions that can be used to represent and interchange provenance information generated in different systems and under different contexts. It can also be specialized to create new classes and properties to model provenance information for different applications and domains.

PROV-N: The Provenance Notation is introduced to provide examples of the PROV data model: aimed at human consumption, PROV-N allows serializations of PROV instances to be created in a compact manner. PROV-N facilitates the mapping of the PROV data model to concrete syntax, and is used as the basis for a formal semantics of PROV. The purpose of this document is to define the PROV-N notation. Comments on the Last Call Working Drafts are welcome through 18 September. The group also published a Working Draft of PROV Model Primer, which provides an intuitive introduction and guide to the PROV specification for provenance on the Web. The primer is intended as a starting point for those wishing to create or use PROV data. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

Last Call: SPARQL 1.1 Query Language The SPARQL Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of SPARQL 1.1 Query Language. RDF is a directed, labeled graph data format for representing information in the Web. This specification defines the syntax and semantics of the SPARQL query language for RDF. SPARQL can be used to express queries across diverse data sources, whether the data is stored natively as RDF or viewed as RDF via middleware. SPARQL contains capabilities for querying required and optional graph patterns along with their conjunctions and disjunctions. SPARQL also supports aggregation, subqueries, negation, creating values by expressions, extensible value testing, and constraining queries by source RDF graph. The results of SPARQL queries can be result sets or RDF graphs. Comments are welcome through 21 August. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

W3C Identifies how the Web will Transform the Digital Signage Industry W3C announced today new momentum for making the Web the future interoperable platform for Digital Signage. W3C issued a summary of key topics and use cases for bringing Digital Signage to the Web, as well as a first gap analysis of enhancements to the Web to enable the transformation of the Digital Signage ecosystem. Digital signage covers a spectrum of display sizes and locations, from sports arenas and urban video terminals of every shape, to monitors in elevators, storefront windows, train stations, and public kiosks featuring rich interactivity. In June, an initial opportunity to discuss next-generation Web-based Digital Signage services drew industry stakeholders to a W3C Workshop "All Signs Point to the Web," hosted by NTT. Read the full press release about the Workshop report and join the Web-based Signage Business Group to develop use cases and requirements for standardization.

File API Draft Published The Web Applications Working Group has published a Working Draft of File API. Web applications should have the ability to manipulate as wide as possible a range of user input, including files that a user may wish to upload to a remote server or manipulate inside a rich web application. This specification defines the basic representations for files, lists of files, errors raised by access to files, and programmatic ways to read files. Additionally, this specification also defines an interface that represents "raw data" which can be asynchronously processed on the main thread of conforming user agents. The interfaces and API defined in this specification can be used with other interfaces and APIs exposed to the Open Web Platform. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Two JSON-LD First Drafts Published JSON has proven to be a highly useful object serialization and messaging format. JSON-LD harmonizes the representation of Linked Data in JSON by outlining a common JSON representation format for expressing directed graphs; mixing both Linked Data and non-Linked Data in a single document. The RDF Working Group has published two related First Public Working Drafts: JSON-LD API 1.0 outlines an API and a set of algorithms for transforming JSON-LD documents in order to make them easier to work with in programming environments like JavaScript, Python, and Ruby.

JSON-LD Syntax 1.0 outlines a common JSON representation format for expressing directed graphs; mixing both Linked Data and non-Linked Data in a single document. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

XML Signature Best Practices Note Published The XML Security Working Group has published a Group Note of XML Signature Best Practices. This document collects best practices for implementers and users of the XML Signature specification. Most of these best practices are related to improving security and mitigating attacks, yet others are for best practices in the practical use of XML Signature, such as signing XML that doesn't use namespaces, for example. Learn more about the Security Activity.

WebDriver Draft Published The Browser Testing and Tools Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of WebDriver. This specification defines the WebDriver API, a platform-and language-neutral interface that allows programs or scripts to introspect into, and control the behaviour of, a web browser. The WebDriver API is primarily intended to allow developers to write tests that automate a browser from a separate controlling process, but may also be implemented in such a way as to allow in-browser scripts to control a browser. Learn more about the Web Testing Activity.

Last Call: Turtle The RDF Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Turtle. The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a general-purpose language for representing information in the Web. Comments are welcome through 15 September. This document defines a textual syntax for RDF called Turtle that allows an RDF graph to be completely written in a compact and natural text form, with abbreviations for common usage patterns and datatypes. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

Use Cases and Exploratory Approaches for Ruby Markup Draft Published The Internationalization Core Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Use Cases and Exploratory Approaches for Ruby Markup. This document looks at a number of use cases involving ruby, and examines the pros and cons of a number of alternative approaches for meeting those use cases using the current HTML5 model, the XHTML Ruby Annotation model, and two other models. The aim is to clarify which use cases are supported by the existing markup models (HTML5 or XHTML), and where they are not, provide suggestions about how the markup model could be adapted to support those use cases. Learn more about the Internationalization Activity.

Last Call: Content Security Policy 1.0 The Web Application Security Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Content Security Policy 1.0. This document defines Content Security Policy, a mechanism web applications can use to mitigate a broad class of content injection vulnerabilities, such as cross-site scripting (XSS). Content Security Policy is a declarative policy that lets the authors (or server administrators) of a web application restrict from where the application can load resources. Comments are welcome through 24 August. Learn more about the Security Activity.

Three RDF Notes published The RDF Web Applications Working Group has published three Group Notes that, while advanced, were not completed before the end of the group's charter. For more information, see the explanation in each individual document. RDFa API provides and API for simple extraction and usage of structured information from a Web document.

RDF API defines a set of standardized interfaces for working with RDF data in a web-based programming environment.

RDF Interfaces defines a set of standardized interfaces for working with RDF data in a programming environment. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

Note Published: Registration and Discovery of Multimodal Modality Components in Multimodal Systems: Use Cases and Requirements The Multimodal Interaction Working Group has published a Group Note of Registration and Discovery of Multimodal Modality Components in Multimodal Systems: Use Cases and Requirements. Users of mobile phones, personal computers, tablets or other electronic Devices are increasingly interacting with their devices in a variety of ways: touch screen, voice, stylus, keypads, etc. Today, users, vendors, operators and broadcasters can produce and use all kinds of different Media and Devices that are capable of supporting multiple modes of input or output. Tools for authoring, edition or distribution of Media for Application developers are well-documented. But there is a lack of powerful tools or practices for a richer integration and semantic synchronization of all these media. To the best of our knowledge, there is no standardized way to build a web Application that can dynamically combine and control discovered modalities by querying a registry based on user-experience data and modality states. This document describes design requirements that the Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces specification needs to cover in order to address this problem. Learn more about the Multimodal Interaction Activity.

Web Application Privacy Best Practices Note Published The Device APIs Working Group has published a Group Note of Web Application Privacy Best Practices. This document describes privacy best practices for web applications, including those that might use device APIs. This continues the work on privacy best practices in section 3.3.1 on "User Awareness and Control" Mobile Web Application Best Practices without repeat the privacy principles and requirements documented in the Device API Privacy Requirements Note that it complements. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity.

Quota Management API Draft Published The Web Applications Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Quota Management API. This specification defines an API to manage usage and availability of local storage resources, and defines a means by which a user agent (UA) may grant Web applications permission to use more local space, temporarily or persistently, via various different storage APIs. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Selectors API Level 2 Draft Published The Web Applications Working Group has published a Working Draft of Selectors API Level 2. Selectors, which are widely used in CSS, are patterns that match against elements in a tree structure. The Selectors API specification defines methods for retrieving Element nodes from the DOM by matching against a group of selectors, and for testing if a given element matches a particular selector. It is often desirable to perform DOM operations on a specific set of elements in a document. These methods simplify the process of acquiring and testing specific elements, especially compared with the more verbose techniques defined and used in the past. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Last Call: Selectors API Level 1 The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Selectors API Level 1. Selectors, which are widely used in CSS, are patterns that match against elements in a tree structure]. The Selectors API specification defines methods for retrieving Element nodes from the DOM by matching against a group of selectors. It is often desirable to perform DOM operations on a specific set of elements in a document. These methods simplify the process of acquiring specific elements, especially compared with the more verbose techniques defined and used in the past. Comments are welcome through 19 July. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

PROV-AQ: Provenance Access and Query Draft Published The Provenance Working Group has published a Working Draft of PROV-AQ: Provenance Access and Query. This document specifies how to use standard Web protocols, including HTTP, to obtain information about the provenance of resources on the Web. It describes both simple access mechanisms for locating provenance information associated with web pages or resources, and provenance query services for more complex deployments. This is part of the larger W3C Prov provenance framework. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

Web Notifications Draft Published The Web Notification Working Group has published a Working Draft of Web Notifications. Web notifications defines an API for end-user notifications. A notification allows alerting the user outside the context of a web page of an occurrence, such as the delivery of email. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Two Drafts Published by the CSS Working Group The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published two Working Drafts: A Last Call Working Draft of CSS Flexible Box Layout Module. The specification describes a CSS box model optimized for user interface design. In the flex layout model, the children of a flex container can be laid out in any direction, and can "flex" their sizes, either growing to fill unused space or shrinking to avoid overflowing the parent. Both horizontal and vertical alignment of the children can be easily manipulated. Nesting of these boxes (horizontal inside vertical, or vertical inside horizontal) can be used to build layouts in two dimensions Comments are welcome through 03 July.

The First Public Working Draft of CSS Box Alignment Module Level 3. This module contains the features of CSS relating to the alignment of boxes within their containers in the various CSS box layout models: block layout, table layout, flex layout, and grid layout. (The alignment of text and inline-level content is defined in CSS3TEXT and CSS3LINEBOX.) CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, in speech, etc. Learn more about the Style Activity.

Online Symposium: Mobile Accessibility Registration is now open for the online symposium on mobile accessibility to be held on 25 June 2012. The symposium is intended for researchers and practitioners who want to explore mobile accessibility challenges and solutions, and help develop a roadmap for future research and development. For details and registration, see Mobile Accessibility - Online Symposium. Learn more about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

MediaStream Processing API Note Published The Audio Working Group has published a Group Note of MediaStream Processing API. A number of existing or proposed features for the Web platform deal with continuous real-time media. Many use-cases require these features to work together. This proposal makes HTML Streams the foundation for integrated Web media processing by creating a mixing and effects processing API for HTML Streams. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Two Last Call Working Drafts published by the RDB2RDF Working Group The RDB2RDF Working Group has published two Last Call Working Drafts today: A Direct Mapping of Relational Data to RDF. The need to share data with collaborators motivates custodians and users of relational databases (RDB) to expose relational data on the Web of Data. This document defines a direct mapping from relational data to RDF. This definition provides extension points for refinements within and outside of this document. Comments are welcome through 19 June.

R2RML: RDB to RDF Mapping Language. This document describes R2RML, a language for expressing customized mappings from relational databases to RDF datasets. Such mappings provide the ability to view existing relational data in the RDF data model, expressed in a structure and target vocabulary of the mapping author's choice. R2RML mappings are themselves RDF graphs and written down in Turtle syntax. R2RML enables different types of mapping implementations. Processors could, for example, offer a virtual SPARQL endpoint over the mapped relational data, or generate RDF dumps, or offer a Linked Data interface. Comments are welcome through 19 June. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

Three documents published by the Web Applications Working Group The Web Applications Working Group has published three documents today: First Public Working Draft of Gamepad. The Gamepad specification defines a low-level interface that represents gamepad devices.

First Public Working Draft of Pointer Lock. This specification defines an API that provides scripted access to raw mouse movement data while locking the target of mouse events to a single element and removing the cursor from view. This is an essential input mode for certain classes of applications, especially first person perspective 3D applications and 3D modelling software.

Group Note of The From-Origin Header. The From-Origin Header specification defines the From-Origin response header -- a way for resources to declare they are unavailable within an embedding context. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Five documents published by the Web Applications Working Group The Web Applications Working Group has published five documents today: Last Call Working Draft of The WebSocket API. This specification defines an API that enables Web pages to use the WebSocket protocol (defined by the IETF) for two-way communication with a remote host. Comments are welcome through 14 June.

Last Call Working Draft of Indexed Database API.This document defines APIs for a database of records holding simple values and hierarchical objects. Each record consists of a key and some value. Moreover, the database maintains indexes over records it stores. An application developer directly uses an API to locate records either by their key or by using an index. A query language can be layered on this API. An indexed database can be implemented using a persistent B-tree data structure. Comments are welcome through 21 June.

First Public Working Draft of Input Method Editor API. This specification defines an “IME API” that provides Web applications with scripted access to an IME (input-method editor) associated with a hosting user agent.

First Public Working Draft of URL. This specification defines the term URL, various algorithms for dealing with URLs, and an API for constructing, parsing, and resolving URLs.

Group Note of XBL 2.0. XBL (the Xenogamous Binding Language) describes the ability to associate elements in a document with script, event handlers, CSS, and more complex content models, which can be stored in another document. This can be used to re-order and wrap content so that, for instance, simple HTML or XHTML markup can have complex CSS styles applied without requiring that the markup be polluted with multiple semantically neutral div elements. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Requirements for Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) 2.0 Draft Published The MultilingualWeb-LT Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Requirements for Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) 2.0. This document gathers metadata categories – essentially items like ways to indicate whether or not specific text should be translated, support for machine translation, and so forth – developed within the MultilingualWeb-LT Working Group. The proposed metadata targets web content (primarily HTML5) and “deep Web” content, such as content stored in a content management system (CMS) or XML files from which HTML pages are generated, that facilitates its interaction with multilingual technologies and localization processes. Learn more about the Internationalization Activity.

W3C Launches Indie UI Working Group Today W3C Launched the new Independent User Interface (Indie UI) Working Group that will collaborate with the Web Events WG to develop a way for user actions to be communicated to web applications. Indie UI will develop an intermediate layer between device- and modality-specific events and the functionality needed by web applications, e.g., scrolling the view, placing focus on an object, etc. Indie UI will define a way for different user actions (e.g., scrolling via touch screen, via mouse wheel, or via voice commend) to be translated into a simple event. Then web application developers can get these events from different devices without having to recognize how the user performed the action. Learn more from the announcement e-mail and read about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

Web Services Internationalization (WS-I18N) Note Published The Internationalization Core Working Group has published a Group Note of Web Services Internationalization (WS-I18N). This document describes enhancements to SOAP messaging to provide internationalized and localized operations using locale and international preferences. These mechanisms can be used to accommodate a wide variety of development models for international usage. Learn more about the Internationalization Activity.

Three drafts published by the Web Applications Working Group The Web Applications Working Group has published three First Public Working Drafts today: Introduction to Web Components. This document is a non-normative reference, which aims to provide an overview of how Web Components work. It summarizes the normative information in the respective specifications in an easy-to-digest prose and illustration.

Shadow DOM. This specification describes a method of establishing and maintaining functional boundaries between DOM subtrees and how these subtrees interact with each other within a document tree, thus enabling better functional encapsulation within DOM.

The Screen Orientation API. The Screen Orientation API's goal is to provide an interface for web applications to be able to read the screen orientation state, to be informed when this state changes and to be able to lock the screen orientation to a specific state. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

W3C Launches Linked Data Platform Working Group Today W3C launched the new Linked Data Platform (LDP) Working Group to promote the use of linked data on the Web. Per its charter, the group will explain how to use a core set of services and technologies to build powerful applications capable of integrating public data, secured enterprise data, and personal data. The platform will be based on proven Web technologies including HTTP for transport, and RDF and other Semantic Web standards for data integration and reuse. The group will produce supporting materials, such as a description of uses cases, a list of requirements, and a test suite and/or validation tools to help ensure interoperability and correct implementation. Learn more about the Semantic Web.

Five Provenance Drafts Published The Provenance Working Group published 5 Working Drafts today related to the PROV data model. Provenance information can be used for many purposes, such as understanding how data was collected so it can be meaningfully used, determining ownership and rights over an object, making judgments about information to determine whether to trust it, verifying that the process and steps used to obtain a result complies with given requirements, and reproducing how something was generated. The PROV model is used to represent provenance records, which contain descriptions of the entities and activities involved in producing and delivering or otherwise influencing a given object. PROV-DM: The PROV Data Model introduces the provenance concepts found in PROV and defines PROV-DM types and relations.

Constraints of the Provenance Data Model introduces a further set of concepts useful for understanding the PROV data model and defines inferences that are allowed on provenance statements and validity constraints that PROV instances should follow. These inferences and constraints are useful for readers who develop applications that generate provenance or reason over provenance. (First Public Working Draft)

PROV-N: The Provenance Notation allows serializations of PROV instances to be created in a compact manner. (First Public Working Draft)

PROV-O: The PROV Ontology expresses the PROV Data Model using the OWL2 Web Ontology Language (OWL2).

PROV Model Primer provides an intuitive introduction and guide to the PROV specification for provenance on the Web. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

W3C Advisory Committee Elects Advisory Board The W3C Advisory Committee has filled six open seats on the W3C Advisory Board. Created in 1998, the Advisory Board provides guidance to the Team on issues of strategy, management, legal matters, process, and conflict resolution. Beginning 1 July 2012, the nine Advisory Board participants are Ann Bassetti (Boeing), Jim Bell (HP), Michael Champion (Microsoft), Steve Holbrook (IBM), Qiuling Pan (Huawei), Jean-Charles Verdié (MStar Semiconductor), Ora Lassila (Nokia), Charles McCathieNevile (Opera), and Takeshi Natsuno (Keio University). Steve Zilles continues as interim Advisory Board Chair. Read more about the Advisory Board.

Three SPARQL 1.1 Last Call Drafts Published The SPARQL Working Group published three Last Call Working Drafts today: SPARQL 1.1 Overview, which provides an introduction to a set of W3C specifications that facilitate querying and manipulating RDF graph content on the Web or in an RDF store.

SPARQL 1.1 Graph Store HTTP Protocol, which describes the use of HTTP operations for the purpose of managing a collection of RDF graphs in the REST architectural style.

SPARQL 1.1 Query Results CSV and TSV Formats, which describes the use of CSV(comma separated values) and TSV (tab separated values) for expressing SPARQL query results from SELECT queries. Comments are welcome through 01 June. The group is further planning to shortly release a 2nd Last Call working draft of the SPARQL 1.1 Query Language, after which we plan to advance all Recommendation track drafts in the next iteration to Proposed Recommendation directly. To this end, the group is currently gathering implementation reports and would appreciate reports from the community of implementations of any of the SPARQL1.1 specifications. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

W3C Workshop: Web-Based Signage W3C announces today a Workshop on Web-Based Signage, 14-15 June in Tokyo (Chiba), Japan, and hosted by NTT. W3C is organizing a workshop to share perspectives, business use cases, and technology requirements so that the Open Web Platform can be used on large digital displays (such as those found in city squares and at sporting events). We invite operators of consumer electronics companies, digital signage platforms, advertisers, browser vendors, sign owners, and others to participate in this discussion. W3C membership is not required to participate in this workshop. Please submit a statement of interest by 16 May and learn more about participation.

Last Call: Server-Sent Events The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Server-Sent Events. This specification defines an API for opening an HTTP connection for receiving push notifications from a server in the form of DOM events. The API is designed such that it can be extended to work with other push notification schemes such as Push SMS. Comments are welcome through 17 May. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Call for Participation in The Graphical Web 2012 Developers and designers are excited by the ability to use the graphical features of all modern browsers - Canvas, SVG, CSS, WebGL, and HTML5 video and audio. W3C is proud to support The Graphical Web 2012, which is both the first in a new international conference series on Open Web Graphics and the 10th conference on Scalable Vector Graphics, 11-14 September 2012. This year, the conference returns to Switzerland and the site of the first SVG Open. ETH Zürich will be hosting the conference at its Hönggerberg campus. Members of the W3C SVG Working Group, including W3C Team members Chris Lilley and Doug Schepers, will be attending the conference. The SVG Working Group will also brief attendees on recent developments around the SVG specification, including SVG2 and integration with CSS3 and HTML5. The conference includes a day of instructional courses. The deadline for presentation abstracts and course outlines is 7 May. Learn more about the W3C Graphics Activity.

W3C Invites Implementations of Web IDL The Web Applications Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Web IDL. This document defines an interface definition language, Web IDL, that can be used to describe interfaces that are intended to be implemented in web browsers. 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. How interfaces described with Web IDL correspond to constructs within ECMAScript execution environments is also detailed in this document. It is expected that this document acts as a guide to implementors of already-published specifications, and that newly published specifications reference this document to ensure conforming implementations of interfaces are interoperable. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Incubator Group Report: Towards a Semantic Decision Representation Format The W3C Decisions and Decision-Making Incubator Group has published their final report. The mission of the Decisions and Decision-Making Incubator Group, part of the Incubator Activity, was to determine the requirements, use cases, and a representation of decisions and decision-making in a collaborative and networked environment suitable for leading to a potential standard for decision exchange, shared situational awareness, and measurement of the speed, effectiveness, and human factors of decision-making. The Incubator Group explored the question over the last year, including use cases, requirements and formats for representing decisions in a machine-understandable format. A standardized decision format would allow the decisions that occur everyday to be managed, archived, shared, and tracked. Two key benefits include the ability to expand and advance the meaningful use of web linked data, as well as the ability to tie-in domain knowledge to provide decision context. The final report captures the major accomplishments and results of the incubator group and ends with a recommendation to transition into a W3C Working Group for the establishment of a Decision Markup Language (DecisionML). This publication is part of the Incubator Activity, a forum where W3C Members can innovate and experiment. This work is not on the W3C standards track.

W3C Invites Implementations of CSS Backgrounds and Borders Module Level 3 The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of CSS Backgrounds and Borders Module Level 3. CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, in speech, etc. This draft contains the features of CSS level 3 relating to borders and backgrounds. It includes and extends the functionality of CSS level 2, which builds on CSS level 1. 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.

W3C Invites Implementations of CSS Image Values and Replaced Content Module Level 3 The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of CSS Image Values and Replaced Content Module Level 3. CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, in speech, etc. This module contains the features of CSS level 3 relating to the <image> type and replaced elements. It includes and extends the functionality of CSS level 2, which builds on CSS level 1. The main extensions compared to level 2 are the generalization of the <url> type to the <image> type, several additions to the ‘<image>’ type, a generic sizing algorithm for images and other replaced content in CSS, and several properties controlling the interaction of replaced elements and CSS's layout models. Learn more about the Style Activity.

Two File API Working Drafts Published The Web Applications Working Group has published two Working Draft today: File API: Writer. This specification defines an API for writing to files from web applications. This API is designed to be used in conjunction with, and depends on definitions in, other APIs and elements on the web platform. Most relevant among these are File API and Web Workers.

File API: Directories and System. This specification defines an API to navigate file system hierarchies, and defines a means by which a user agent may expose sandboxed sections of a user's local filesystem to web applications. It builds on File Writer API, which in turn built on File API, each adding a different kind of functionality. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Registration for W3C Online Course on Mobile Web Best Practices; Early Bird Rate Through 23 April W3C is pleased to announce that registration is now open for the next edition of the most popular W3C online training course, Mobile Web 1: Best Practices. The 6-week course begins 30 April 2012. It will help Web designers and content producers who are already familiar with the desktop world to become familiar with the Web as delivered on mobile devices. It is based entirely on W3C standards, particularly the Mobile Web Best Practices. Along with the course description, read comments from past students and what they have achieved. An early bird rate of €195 is available until 23 April 2012; after that date the full price is €225 so register now.

W3C Workshop: The Multilingual Web – Linked Open Data and Multi­lingual­Web-LT Requirements W3C announces today a Workshop on Linked Open Data and Multi­lingual­Web-LT Requirements, 11-13 June in Dublin, Ireland. Organized by the MultilingualWeb-LT Working Group, the purpose of this workshop is two-fold: first, to discuss the intersection between Linked Open Data and Multilingual Technologies, and second, to discuss Requirements of the W3C MultilingualWeb-LT Working Group. Participation is free. We welcome participation from both speakers and non-speaking attendees. However, whereas future MultilingualWeb workshops will continue the wide-ranging format of previous MultilingualWeb events, and will aim again at a larger audience, attendees for this workshop are required to participate actively in discussions and will need to submit a position statement for the workshop registration. There are limited spaces available. Learn more about Internationalization at W3C.

CSS Variables Module Level 1 Draft Published The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of CSS Variables Module Level 1. CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, in speech, etc. This module contains the features of CSS level 3 relating to variables. It includes and extends the functionality of CSS level 2, which builds on CSS level 1. The main extensions compared to level 2 are the introduction of the variable as a new primitive value type that is accepted by all properties. Learn more about the Style Activity.

Four Drafts Published by the Government Linked Data Working Group The Government Linked Data Working Group has published four First Public Working Drafts today: Data Catalog Vocabulary (DCAT). DCAT is an RDF vocabulary designed to facilitate interoperability between data catalogs published on the Web. This document defines the schema and provides examples for its use.

The RDF Data Cube Vocabulary. There are many situations where it would be useful to be able to publish multi-dimensional data, such as statistics, on the web in such a way that it can be linked to related data sets and concepts. The Data Cube vocabulary provides a means to do this using the W3C RDF (Resource Description Framework) standard. The model underpinning the Data Cube vocabulary is compatible with the cube model that underlies SDMX (Statistical Data and Metadata eXchange), an ISO standard for exchanging and sharing statistical data and metadata among organizations. The Data Cube vocabulary is a core foundation which supports extension vocabularies to enable publication of other aspects of statistical data flows.

Terms for describing people. This document defines a set of terms for describing people. It defines how to describe people's characteristics such as names or addresses and how to relate people to other things, for example to organizations or projects. For each term, guidance on the usage within a running example is provided. This document also defines mappings to widely used vocabularies to enable interoperability.

An organization ontology. This document describes a core ontology for organizational structures, aimed at supporting linked-data publishing of organizational information across a number of domains. It is designed to allow domain-specific extensions to add classification of organzations and roles, as well as extensions to support neighbouring information such as organizational activities. Learn more about the eGovernment Activity.

DOM4 Draft Published The Web Applications Working Group has published a Working Draft of DOM4. DOM4 defines the event and document model the Web platform uses. The DOM is a language- and platform neutral interface that allows programs and scripts to dynamically access and update the content and structure of documents. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

W3C Launches Web Cryptography Working Group W3C launched today a new Web Cryptography Working Group, whose mission is to define an API that lets developers implement secure application protocols on the level of Web applications, including message confidentiality and authentication services, by exposing trusted cryptographic primitives from the browser. Web application developers will no longer have to create their own or use untrusted third-party libraries for cryptographic primitives. This will improve security on the Web. Some of the chartered use cases for this API include: The ability to select credentials and sign statements can be necessary to perform high-value transactions such as those involved in finance, corporate security, and identity-related claims about personal data.

The provisioning and use of keys within Web applications can be used for scenarios such as increasing the security of user authentication and determining whether a particular device is authenticated for particular services.

The ability to check source integrity before executing Javascript code previously stored in local storage. Learn more about the Security Activity.

Last Call: Cross-Origin Resource Sharing The Web Application Security Working Group has published a Working Draft of Cross-Origin Resource Sharing. This document, produced jointly with the Web Applications Working Group, defines a mechanism to enable client-side cross-origin requests. Specifications that enable an API to make cross-origin requests to resources 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 (e.g., specifying Access-Control-Allow-Origin: http://example.org as response header), which would allow that resource to be fetched cross-origin from http://example.org. Comments are welcome through 1 May 2012. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Three drafts published by the CSS Working Group The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published three Working Drafts today. CSS Transforms.CSS transforms allows elements styled with CSS to be transformed in two-dimensional or three-dimensional space. This specification is the convergence of the CSS 2D transforms, CSS 3D transforms and SVG transforms specifications.

CSS Animations. This CSS module describes a way for authors to animate the values of CSS properties over time, using keyframes. The behavior of these keyframe animations can be controlled by specifying their duration, number of repeats, and repeating behavior.

CSS Transitions.CSS Transitions allows property changes in CSS values to occur smoothly over a specified duration. Learn more about the Style Activity.

SMIL Timesheets 1.0 Note Published The SYMM Working Group has published a Group Note of SMIL Timesheets 1.0. This document defines an XML timing language that makes SMIL 3.0 element and attribute timing control available to a wide range of other XML languages. This language allows SMIL timing to be integrated into a wide variety of a-temporal languages, even when several such languages are combined in a compound document. Because of its similarity with external style and positioning descriptions in the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) language, this functionality has been termed SMIL Timesheets. Learn more about the W3C Synchronized Multimedia Activity.

Last Call: Widget Updates The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Widget Updates. This specification defines a process and a document format to allow a user agent to update an installed widget package with a different version of a widget package. A widget cannot automatically update itself; instead, a widget relies on the user agent to manage the update process. Comments are welcome through 19 April. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

CSS Specifications Updated: Flexible Box Layout, Grid Layout The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published two Working Drafts: CSS Flexible Box Layout Module describes a CSS box model optimized for user interface design. In the flexbox layout model, the children of a flexbox can be laid out in any direction, and can "flex" their sizes, either growing to fill unused space or shrinking to avoid overflowing the parent. Both horizontal and vertical alignment of the children can be easily manipulated. Nesting of these boxes (horizontal inside vertical, or vertical inside horizontal) can be used to build layouts in two dimensions.

CSS Grid Layout which allows designers to define invisible grids of horizontal and vertical lines. Elements from a document can then be anchored to points in the grid, which aligns them visually to each other, even if they are not next to each other in the source. Learn more about the Style Activity.

W3C Invites Implementations of CSS Speech Module The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of CSS Speech Module. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a language that describes the rendering of markup documents (e.g. HTML, XML) on various supports, such as screen, paper, speech, etc. The Speech module defines aural CSS properties that enable authors to declaratively control the rendering of documents via speech synthesis, and using optional audio cues. Note that this standard was developed in cooperation with the Voice Browser Activity. Learn more about the Style Activity.

Call for Review: Media Fragments URI 1.0 (basic) Proposed Recommendation Published The Media Fragments Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of Media Fragments URI 1.0 (basic). This document describes the Media Fragments 1.0 (basic) specification. It specifies the syntax for constructing media fragment URIs and explains how to handle them when used over the HTTP protocol. The syntax is based on the specification of particular name-value pairs that can be used in URI fragment and URI query requests to restrict a media resource to a certain fragment. The Media Fragment WG has no authority to update registries of all targeted media types. We recommend media type owners to harmonize their existing schemes with the ones proposed in this document and update or add the fragment semantics specification to their media type registration. Comments are welcome through 26 April. Learn more about the Video in the Web Activity.

Web Audio API Draft Published The Audio Working Group has published a Working Draft of Web Audio API. This specification describes a high-level JavaScript API for processing and synthesizing audio in web applications. The primary paradigm is of an audio routing graph, where a number of AudioNode objects are connected together to define the overall audio rendering. The actual processing will primarily take place in the underlying implementation (typically optimized Assembly / C / C++ code), but direct JavaScript processing and synthesis is also supported. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Two Drafts Published by the Tracking Protection Working Group The Tracking Protection Working Group has published two documents today. A First Public Working Draft of Tracking Compliance and Scope which defines the meaning of a Do Not Track (DNT) preference and sets out practices for websites to comply with this preference.

A First Public Working Draft of Tracking Preference Expression (DNT) which defines the technical mechanisms for expressing a tracking preference via the DNT request header field in HTTP, via an HTML DOM property readable by embedded scripts, and via properties accessible to various user agent plug-in or extension APIs. It also defines mechanisms for sites to signal whether and how they honor this preference, both in the form of a machine-readable tracking status resource at a well-known location and via a "Tk" response header field, and a mechanism for allowing the user to approve site-specific exceptions to DNT as desired. Learn more about the Privacy Activity.

Three Web Applications Working Group specifications published The Web Applications Working Group has published three documents today. A Last Call Working Draft of HTML5 Web Messaging which defines two mechanisms for communicating between browsing contexts in HTML documents. Comments are welcome through 03 April.

A Last Call Working Draft of Web Workers that defines an API that allows Web application authors to spawn background workers running scripts in parallel to their main page. This allows for thread-like operation with message-passing as the coordination mechanism. Comments are welcome through 03 April.

A Group Note of Widget URI scheme that defines the widget URI scheme and rules for dereferencing a widget URI, which can be used to address resources inside a package. The dereferencing model relies on HTTP semantics to return resources in a manner akin to a HTTP GET request. Doing so allows this URI scheme to be used with other technologies that rely on HTTP responses to function as intended, such as XMLHTTPRequest. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Last Call: High Resolution Time The Web Performance Working Group has published a First Public and Last Call Working Draft of High Resolution Time. This document defines a Javascript interface that provides the current time in sub-millisecond resolution and such that it is not subject to system clock skew or adjustments. Comments are welcome through 10 April. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

W3C Workshop - Using Open Data: policy modeling, citizen empowerment, data journalism W3C announces today a Workshop on Using Open Data: policy modeling, citizen empowerment, data journalism. For many years, W3C has been a keen promoter of Open Data, fostering a culture in which public administrations make their data available, ideally in machine-processable formats. Many governments have embraced the idea with enthusiasm, setting up national data portals. As part of the FP7-funded Crossover Project, W3C and the European Commission are running a Workshop to ask a simple question: what is all the 'new' government open data being used for? The Workshop takes place 19-20 June in Brussels, Belgium at the European Commission Headquarters. W3C Membership is not required to participate, but participation is limited to 80 people and participants must submit position papers. Workshop participants will focus on uses of open data, not its publication. In particular, the intention is that participants will highlight uses of data for tools that aid policy modeling, that empower citizens, and that can be usefully visualized for data journalism. For more information, see the Workshop home page.

Two Notes Published by the HTML Data Task Force The HTML Data Task Force, Semantic Web Interest Group has published two Notes today: The HTML Data Guide aims to help publishers and consumers of HTML data. With several syntaxes (microformats, microdata, RDFa) and voc