News
XML is Ten!
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 indicator of how dedicat class="talkstart">4 February, New Delhi, India: Web Accessibility: International Standards for Local UsersShadi Abou-Zahra gives a keynote at Techshare India 2008.
Toward More Transparent Government: Workshop Report on eGovernment and
the Web
Call for Review: Canonical XML 1.1
Proposed Recommendation
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)
Best Practice Recipes for Publishing RDF
Vocabularies
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)
SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System
Reference (First Public Working Draft)
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)
W3C Publishes HTML 5 Draft, Future of Web
Content
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)
Relationship Between Mobile Web and Web Content
Accessibility (First Public Working Draft)
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)
W3C Advisory Committee Elects TAG Participants
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)
SPARQL Standard Opens Data on the
Web
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)
W3C Invites Implementations of SMIL 3.0 (Candidate
Recommendation)
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)