The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential. W3C is a forum for information, commerce, communication, and collective understanding. On this page, you'll find W3C news, links to W3C technologies and ways to get involved. New visitors can find help in Finding Your Way at W3C. We encourage organizations to learn more about W3C and about W3C Membership.
To celebrate ten years of XML, W3C invites you to send a greeting and tell us about an XML-related blog or article. Many thanks to the FLWOR Foundation for their generous sponsorship of XML10.
Help W3C by making a donation through the W3C Supporters Program.
Current job opportunities at W3C: Web Accessibility Engineer. Current W3C Fellows Program openings are Business and Technology Communications Specialist, Web / Graphic Designer, and Software Engineer.
2008-02-12: Ten years ago, on 10 February 1998, W3C published Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation. W3C is marking the ten-year anniversary of XML by celebrating "XML10" and extending thanks to the dedicated communities -- including people who have participated in W3C's XML groups and mailing lists, the SGML community, and xml-dev -- whose efforts have created a successful family of technologies based on the solid XML 1.0 foundation. The success of XML is a strong indicator of how dedicated individuals, working within the W3C Process, can engage with a larger community to produce industry-changing results. "Today we celebrate the success of open standards in preserving Web data from proprietary ownership," said Jon Bosak, who led the W3C Working Group that produced XML 1.0. Read the press release and testimonials. Send W3C a greeting and learn more about XML at W3C. (Permalink)
2008-02-13: The Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Working Group has published a Group Note of Best Practices for XML Internationalization. This document provides a set of guidelines for developing XML documents and schemas that are internationalized properly. Following the best practices describes here allow both the developer of XML applications, as well as the author of XML content to create material in different languages. Learn more about the Internationalization Activity. (Permalink)
2008-02-08: W3C invites Web content authors to run the beta release of the W3C mobileOK checker and make their content work on a broad range of mobile devices. This new version provides more accurate results and a more reliable experience. Visitors of the Mobile World Congress (in Barcelona, starting Monday, 11 February) are welcome to stop by the W3C Mobile Web Initiative booth (in Hall 7) to learn more about this tool for making Web sites mobile-friendly. (Permalink)
2008-02-06: The XML Core Working Group has published the Proposed Edited Recommendation of Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fifth Edition). This revision of XML 1.0 incorporates all known errata for XML 1.0 Fourth Edition; see the diff-marked specification for changes. This version of the XML 1.0 specification contains one major change, to the definition of names, bringing one major benefit of XML 1.1 into XML 1.0; please read the background for this change as part of any review. Comments are welcome through 16 May. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. (Permalink)
2008-02-04: The Protocols and Formats Working Group published First Public Working Drafts of:
WAI-ARIA defines a way to make Web content and Web applications more accessible to people with disabilities. It especially helps with dynamic content and advanced user interface controls developed with Ajax, HTML, JavaScript, and related technologies. An updated WAI-ARIA Roadmap was also published.
Additionally, the Education and Outreach Working Group published a new WAI-ARIA FAQ and updated WAI-ARIA Overview. Read the Call for Review: New WAI-ARIA Documents announcement and about the Web Accessibility Initiative. (Permalink)
2008-02-01: Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel. (Permalink)
2008-01-29: The XML Core Working Group has published the Proposed Recommendation of Canonical XML 1.1. The specification establishes a method for determining whether two documents are identical, or whether an application has not changed a document, except for transformations permitted by XML 1.0 and Namespaces in XML. Canonical XML 1.1 is a revision to Canonical XML 1.0 designed to address issues related to inheritance of attributes in the XML namespace when canonicalizing document subsets, including the requirement not to inherit xml:id, and to treat xml:base URI path processing properly. Comments are welcome through 07 March. Learn more about W3C's XML Activity. (Permalink)
2008-01-29: The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group has published the Working Draft of Best Practice Recipes for Publishing RDF Vocabularies. This document describes best practice recipes for publishing vocabularies or ontologies on the Web (in RDF Schema or OWL). Each recipe introduces general principles and an example configuration for use with an Apache HTTP server (which may be adapted to other environments). The recipes are all designed to be consistent with the architecture of the Web as currently specified. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)
2008-01-25: The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System Reference. This document defines the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS), a common data model for sharing and linking knowledge organization systems via the Semantic Web. SKOS provides a standard, low-cost means to describe the semantic relationships between existing knowledge systems and to port those systems to the Semantic Web. SKOS also provides a lightweight, intuitive language for developing and sharing new knowledge organization systems. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)
2008-01-22: W3C today published an early draft of HTML 5, a major revision of the markup language for the Web. The HTML Working Group is creating HTML 5 to be the open, royalty-free specification for rich Web content and Web applications. "HTML is of course a very important standard," said Tim Berners-Lee, author of the first version of HTML and W3C Director. "I am glad to see that the community of developers, including browser vendors, is working together to create the best possible path for the Web." New features include APIs for drawing two-dimensional graphics and ways to embed and control audio and video content. HTML 5 helps to improve interoperability and reduce software costs by giving precise rules not only about how to handle all correct HTML documents but also how to recover from errors. Discover other new features, read the press release, and learn more about the future of HTML. (Permalink)
2008-01-22: The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group and the WAI Education and Outreach Working Group have published the First Public Working Draft of Relationship Between Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. See the announcement email.
The groups encourage people to start by reading Web Content Accessibility and Mobile Web: Making a Web Site Accessible Both for People with Disabilities and for Mobile Devices, which shows how design goals for accessibility and mobile access overlap. A third document, Experiences Shared by People with Disabilities and by People Using Mobile Devices, provides examples of barriers that people (without disabilities) face when interacting with Web content via mobile devices, and similar barriers for people with disabilities using desktop computers. Learn more about the Mobile Web Initiative and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). (Permalink)
2008-01-22: The W3C Advisory Committee has elected Ashok Malhotra (Oracle), T.V. Raman (Google), and Henry Thompson (University of Edinburgh) to the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG). Continuing TAG participants are Noah Mendelsohn (IBM), David Orchard (BEA), Jonathan Rees (Science Commons), Norm Walsh (Sun), and Stuart Williams (HP), who co-Chairs the TAG with Tim Berners-Lee. The mission of the TAG is to build consensus around principles of Web architecture and to interpret and clarify these principles when necessary, to resolve issues involving general Web architecture brought to the TAG, and to help coordinate cross-technology architecture developments inside and outside W3C. (Permalink)
2008-01-15: Today, the World Wide Web Consortium made it easier to share and reuse data across application, enterprise, and community boundaries with the publication of three new Semantic Web standards for SPARQL (pronounced "sparkle"). SPARQL is the query language for the Semantic Web (see Semantic Web use cases). SPARQL queries hide the details of data management, which lowers costs and increases robustness of data integration on the Web. "Trying to use the Semantic Web without SPARQL is like trying to use a relational database without SQL," explained Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director. There are already 14 implementations of the standard, which is comprised of three W3C Recommendations: SPARQL Query Language for RDF, SPARQL Protocol for RDF, and SPARQL Query Results XML Format. Read the press release, testimonials and learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)
2008-01-15: The SYMM Working Group has published the Candidate Recommendation of Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL 3.0), an XML-based language that allows authors to create interactive multimedia presentations. Using SMIL 3.0, an author can describe the temporal behavior of a multimedia presentation, associate hyperlinks with media objects and describe the layout of the presentation on a screen. The Working Group is building a test suite help ensure interoperable implementation. Learn more about W3C work on Synchronized Multimedia (Permalink)
Inventive Designers is an active member of the XSL WG. It offers a complete output solution, called Scriptura XBOS, that is platform independent, very user-friendly and based on W3C standards such as XML, XSLT, XSL-FO, SVG, and SOAP 1.2. (Member testimonials)
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