Media Fragments URI 1.0 First Draft Published The Media Fragments Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Media Fragments URI 1.0. Audio and video resources on the World Wide Web are currently treated as "foreign" objects, which can only be embedded using a plugin that is capable of decoding and interacting with the media resource. Specific media servers are generally required to provide for server-side features such as direct access to time offsets into a video without the need to retrieve the entire resource. Support for such media fragment access varies between different media formats and inhibits standard means of dealing with such content on the Web. Media Fragments URI 1.0 provides for a media-format independent, standard means of addressing media fragments on the Web using Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI). The Working Group also updated Use cases and requirements for Media Fragments. Learn more about the Video in the Web Activity.

W3C China Office Supports First Web Standards Event of Webrebuild.org in Beijing The W3C China Office supported Webrebuild.org with their first Web Standards Event in Beijing. The theme of the event, attended by over 100 people, was "Thoughts on Web Standards" and it aimed at offering a platform for developers in Beijing to discuss and share ideas of how to make better use of Web standards and technologies. Speakers discussed browser compatibility, CSS3.0, HTML5 and ontologies. AnQi (Angel) Li from the W3C China Office gave an opening speech to welcome the attendees and introduced the W3C China Office. Learn more about upcoming W3C talks internationally.

Internet Society and W3C Strengthen Relationship to Help Ensure Open Global Internet In a joint press release today, The Internet Society (ISOC) and W3C announced a donation from ISOC for the purpose of advancing the evolution of W3C as an organization that creates open Web standards. "ISOC and W3C have worked together for years in a number of areas, and have deeply shared values about the Internet’s development," said Lynn St. Amour, President and CEO of the Internet Society. "Our support to the W3C in their transition efforts demonstrates ISOC's commitment to ensuring the Internet continues to be an open, global platform for innovation." The announcement reflects the two organizations' shared aim of ensuring the continued growth and accessibility of the global Internet and Web, and stewardship responsibilities to ensure these global communication platforms continue to benefit users worldwide. More information is available in the press release and in a FAQ about ISOC and W3C.

Last Call: Widget Access Request Policy The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Widget Access Request Policy. This specification defines the security model controlling network access from within a widget, as well as a method for widget authors to request that the user agent grant access to certain network resources or sets thereof. Comments are welcome through 13 January. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) 3.0 Draft Published The Voice Browser Working Group has published a Working Draft of Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) 3.0. The primary goal of this document is to bring the advantages of Web-based development and content delivery to interactive voice response applications. VoiceXML 3.0 is a modular XML language for creating interactive media dialogs that feature synthesized speech, recognition of spoken and DTMF key input, telephony, mixed initiative conversations, and recording and presentation of a variety of media formats including digitized audio, and digitized video. Learn more about the Voice Browser Activity.

W3C Invites Implementation of Widget Packaging and Configuration The Web Applications Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Widget Packaging and Configuration. This specification standardizes a packaging format for software known as widgets. Widgets are client-side applications that are authored using Web standards, but whose content can also be embedded into Web documents. The packaging format acts as a container for files used by a widget. The configuration document is an XML vocabulary that declares metadata and configuration parameters for a widget. The steps for processing a widget package describe the expected behavior and means of error handling for runtimes while processing the packaging format, configuration document, and other relevant files. The group plans to track implementations in an implementation report. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces (MMI Architecture) Working Draft Published The Multimodal Interaction Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces (MMI Architecture), which defines a general and flexible framework providing interoperability among modality-specific components from different vendors - for example, speech recognition from one vendor and handwriting recognition from another. The document as a whole has changed significantly and the group welcomes review. The main changes from the previous draft are (1) clarifying the relationship to EMMA, (2) simplifying the architecture constituents, (3) adding a description on HTTP transport of lifecycle events and (4) adding an example of handwriting recognition modality component. A diff-marked version of this document is available. Learn more about the W3C Multimodal Interaction Activity.

W3C Launches HTML5 Japanese Interest Group W3C has launched the HTML5 Japanese Interest Group whose mission is to facilitate focused discussion in Japanese of the HTML5 specification and of specifications closely related to HTML5, to gather comments and questions in Japanese about those specifications, to collect information about specific use cases in Japan for technologies defined in those specifications, and to report the results of its activities as a group back to the HTML Working Group and others in the community. Learn more in the charter, join the Interest Group, and learn more about the W3C HTML Activity.

Last Call: XMLHttpRequest The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of XMLHttpRequest. The XMLHttpRequest specification defines an API that provides scripted client functionality for transferring data between a client and a server. It is the ECMAScript HTTP API. Comments are welcome through 16 December. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

First Draft of File API Published The Web Applications Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of File API. This specification provides an API for representing file objects in web applications, as well as programmatically selecting them and accessing their data. This API is designed to be used in conjunction with other APIs and elements on the web platform, notably: XMLHttpRequest (e.g. with an overloaded send() method for File objects), postMessage, DataTransfer (part of the drag and drop API defined in [HTML5,]) and Web Workers. Additionally, it should be possible to programmatically obtain a list of files from the input element [HTML5] when it is in the File Upload state. These kinds of behaviors are defined in the appropriate affiliated specifications. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Last Call: XML Entity definitions for Characters The Math Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of XML Entity definitions for Characters. It is difficult to write science fluently if scientific characters are not available for use. It is difficult to read science if corresponding glyphs are not available for presentation. In the majority of cases it is preferable to store characters directly as Unicode character data or as XML numeric character references. However, in some environments it is more convenient to use the ASCII input mechanism provided by XML entity references. Many entity names are in common use, and this specification aims to provide standard mappings to Unicode for each of these names. It introduces no names that have not already been used in earlier specifications. Comments are welcome through 08 December. Learn more about the Math Activity.

W3C Technical Plenary Convenes The W3C community convenes today in Santa Clara, California for Technical Plenary (TPAC) 2009 to discuss: Decentralized Extensibility in HTML5

Maintaining a Healthy Internet Ecosystem -- Challenges to an Open Internet Infrastructure

Privacy on the Web of Applications -- Challenges and Opportunities

Web Apps vs App. Stores

Future of the Social Web

Twelve lightning talks This year, the Internet Society (ISOC), as part of its mission to support the development of open standards, is sponsoring TPAC 2009. Tomorrow, the public will participate in discussion at W3C's first Developer Gathering. Follow the goings-on via hash code "#tpac09" in various social networking channels. Procedings from the Plenary Day will be public.

DataCache API First Working Draft Published The Web Applications Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of DataCache API, which provides Web applications with a means to programatically add and remove resources to a “data cache”, which can then be statically served by user agents when a particular resource is requested. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

First Draft of Emotion Markup Language (EmotionML) 1.0 Published The Multimodal Interaction Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Emotion Markup Language (EmotionML) 1.0. EmotionML provides representations of emotions and related states for technological applications. The aim of this draft is to strike a balance between practical applicability and scientific well-foundedness of emotion specification. The language is conceived as a "plug-in" language suitable for use in three different areas: (1) manual annotation of data, (2) automatic recognition of emotion-related states from user behavior and (3) generation of emotion-related system behavior. Learn more about the Multimodal Interaction Activity.

Incubator Group Report: Rich Web Application Backplane The Rich Web Application Backplane Incubator Group (XG) published their final report today. The report describes two areas of work undertaken by the XG; authoring patterns helpful in supporting high-function web applications in managing client-side data and user interaction control. In addition, a range of methods are considered for implementing such patterns in current browsers without requiring plug-ins or extensions using javascript-based markup behaviors. The Backplane XG recommends that a workshop be organized bringing together interested parties with an aim to creating a Working Group to define a standardized architecture and API for XML and HTML interaction formats implemented in Javascript. 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 OWL 2 Standard Facilitates Information Management and Integration Today W3C announces a new version of a standard for representing knowledge on the Web. OWL 2, part of W3C's Semantic Web toolkit, allows people to capture their knowledge about a particular domain (say, energy or medicine) and then use tools to manage information, search through it, and learn more from it. As an open standard based on Web technology, OWL 2 lowers the cost of merging knowledge from multiple domains. More than a dozen implementations of OWL 2 are already available. The standard consists of 13 documents, of which 4 are instructional. Read the press release , read the testimonials, and learn more about the Semantic Web.

SML XLink Reference Scheme Note Published The Service Modeling Language Working Group has published a Group Note of The SML XLink Reference Scheme. The Service Modeling Language [SML] specification extends the Extensible Mark-up Language and XML Schema with a mechanism for incorporating into XML documents references to other documents or document fragments. The SML specification does not mandate the use of any specific reference scheme, and provides an extensibility mechanism for defining new reference schemes. This note illustrates how the extensibility mechanism can be used to define an SML reference scheme based on XLink links. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity.

W3C Launches MashSSL Incubator Group W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the MashSSL Incubator Group, whose mission is to create an open security protocol to solve a fundamental Internet security problem. Specifically, when two web applications communicate through a potentially untrusted user they do not have any standard way of mutually authenticating each other and establishing a trusted channel. The group seeks to create an open, secure standard for solving this problem. The following W3C Members have sponsored the charter for this group: DigiCert, Venafi and VeriSign. Read more about the Incubator Activity, an initiative to foster development of emerging Web-related technologies. Incubator Activity work is not on the W3C standards track.

API for Media Resource 1.0 First Draft Published The Media Annotations Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of API for Media Resource 1.0. This specification defines a client-side API to access metadata information related to media resources on the Web. The overall purpose of the API is to provide developers with a convenient access to metadata information stored in different metadata formats. The API serves as a mediator between a developer and the underlying Ontology for Media Resource 1.0 with the goal to support interoperability between metadata formats. It offers GET and SET operations to retrieve and to store particular metadata informations represented in a certain metadata format related to media ressources on the Web. Learn more about the Video in the Web Activity.

HTML+RDFa First Draft Published The HTML Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of HTML+RDFa. RDFa is intended to solve the problem of machine-readable data in HTML documents. RDFa provides a set of HTML attributes to augment visual data with machine-readable hints. Using RDFa, authors may turn their existing human-visible text and links into machine-readable data without repeating content. This specification defines rules and guidelines for adapting the RDF in XHTML: Syntax and Processing (RDFa) specification for use in the HTML5 and XHTML5 members of the HTML family. The rules defined in this document not only apply to HTML5 documents in non-XML and XML mode, but also to HTML4 documents interpreted through the HTML5 parsing rules. Learn more about the HTML Activity.

Device APIs Requirements Note Published The Device APIs and Policy Working Group has published a First Draft of a Group Note of Device APIs Requirements. These are the requirements intended to be met in the development of client-side APIs that enable the creation of Web Applications and Web Widgets that interact with devices services such as Calendar, Contacts, Camera, etc. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity.

Last Call: CSS Backgrounds and Borders Module Level 3 The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of CSS Backgrounds and Borders Module Level 3. This document contains the features of CSS level 3 relating to borders and backgrounds. It includes and extends the functionality of CSS level 2 [CSS21], which builds on CSS level 1 [CSS1]. The main extensions compared to level 2 are borders consisting of images, boxes with multiple backgrounds, boxes with rounded corners and boxes with shadows. Comments are welcome through 17 November. Learn more about the Style Activity.

W3C Launches New Site Today W3C launched its new Web site. This update follows the beta site announcement earlier this year. The new site features a harmonized design, simplified information architecture, new style for technical reports, and new content, including calendars and aggregated blogs. Visitors to the site will notice that there are (new) pages that have not yet been completed with up-to-date content. We plan to continue to add content to these pages, and welcome your contributions. Please contact us at site-comments@w3.org if you would like to contribute (e.g., by writing a short technology introduction), or if you find any bugs or anomalies. W3C would like to thank people who helped in the template development, including Airbag Industries, Nicole Sullivan, and Sorin Stefan. W3C also appreciates all of the suggestions that have helped improve the usability of the final product.

Last Call: Widgets 1.0: Widget URIs The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: Widget URIs. Resources inside a widget package are identified and located using a method that is specific to widgets technology. Widget URIs reflect this by providing these specific locators with their own syntax so that resources in widget packages can be readily identified. Comments are welcome through 10 November. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Incubator Group Report: Product Modelling using Semantic Web Technologies The Product Modelling Incubator Group has published their final report. The mission of the Incubator Group was to enable the use of the (Semantic) Web for Product Modelling (PM): the definition, storage, exchange and sharing of product data. Product data is information about the structure and behaviour of things that are realized in industrial processes. So principally product data is about things that are manmade, but it can also be about things in the natural world that interact with those industrial processes and/or its resulting products. The report describes the role and scope of product data, and initial work in two technical areas (1) quantities, units, and scales; and (2) product structure - the decomposition of wholes in parts and the interconnection relationships between these parts. 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.

Learn Mobile Web Design With W3C MWI Experts (Course Begins 12 October) The third and possibly final run of the successful online training course An Introduction to W3C Mobile Web Best Practices is due to start on Monday, 12 October. Participants work at their own pace at times to suit them throughout the 9-week course. The program is well-suited to developers with experience of desktop design and production who wish to apply their HTML and CSS skills to the mobile environment. A mixture of lectures and assignments provide hands-on practical experience in using W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices. Participants will work with both W3C instructors and peers who can share experiences about the real-world challenges of mobile Web design. Comments from previous participants include: "Great course! I really enjoyed it. Found it challenging at times but never felt I was on my own. The forum was an essential element to making me feel part of a community. Kudos!"

"Thanks for the cool course. I learned a lot."

"El contenido del curso es excelente, valoro el interes que le prestan a todos los estudiantes y a los temas de los foros." More information (including a free sample) is available about the course material, registration fee, and intended audience. Learn more about the Mobile Web Initiative.

Last Call: A MathML for CSS profile The Math Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of A MathML for CSS profile. This document describes a profile of MathML 3.0 that could be used to capture structure of mathematical formulae in the way suitable for further CSS formatting. This profile is expected to facilitate adoption of MathML in web browsers and CSS formatters, allowing them to reuse existing CSS visual formatting model, enhanced with a few mathematics-oriented extensions, for rendering of the layout schemata of presentational MathML. Learn more about the W3C Math Activity.

SVG Color 1.2 Language, Primer First Drafts Published The SVG Working Group has published First Public Working Drafts of SVG Color 1.2, Part 2: Language and SVG Color 1.2, Part 1: Primer. The former defines features of the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Language that are specifically for color-managed environments, including document interchange, publishing, and high-quality display. SVG Color extends the control of color, relative to SVG Tiny 1.2, in three ways. Firstly by adding an additional color space for interpolation and compositing; this means that colors are no longer constrained to the sRGB gamut. Secondly by extending the syntax for Paint, thus allowing colors to be specified as calibrated (ICC and named) and uncalibrated ('device') color. Thirdly, it mandates the color management of embedded images. The Primer explains the technical background and gives guidelines on how to use the SVG Color specification with SVG 1.2 Tiny and SVG 1.2 Full modules. Learn more about the Graphics Activity.

WebSimpleDB API First Draft Published The Web Applications Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of WebSimpleDB API. User agents need to store large numbers of objects locally in order to satisfy off-line data requirements of Web applications. Whereas the Web Storage specification is useful for storing pairs of keys and their corresponding values, it does not provide in-order retrieval of keys, efficient searching over values, or storage of duplicate values for a key. The new WebSimpleDB API specification provides a concrete API to perform advanced key-value data management that is at the heart of most sophisticated query processors. It does so by using transactional databases to store keys and their corresponding values. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

XSL-FO 2.0 First Draft Published The XSL-FO subgroup of the XSL Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of Design Notes for Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) 2.0, which contains initial and early work on XSL-FO 2.0. XSL-FO defines an XML vocabulary for formatting and layout of XML documents; use XSLT to transform documents into XSL-FO for on-screen or paper formatting, for example into PDF. Public comments are requested, both from users and implementors of XSL 1.x and from people who have been waiting for new features before using XSL-FO. Lean more about XML.

Last Call: Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 3.0 The Math Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 3.0. MathML is an XML application for describing mathematical notation and capturing both its structure and content. The goal of MathML is to enable mathematics to be served, received, and processed on the World Wide Web, just as HTML has enabled this functionality for text. Comments are welcome through 11 November. Learn more about the Math Activity.

W3C Launches Provenance Incubator Group W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the Provenance Incubator Group, whose mission is to provide a state-of-the art understanding and develop a roadmap in the area of provenance for Semantic Web technologies, development, and possible standardization. The group will be chaired by Yolanda Gil. The following W3C Members have sponsored the charter for this group: Renssealaer Polytechnic Institute, Talis Information Limited, University of Manchester, University of Southampton, University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute (USC / ISI), and Vrije Universiteit. Read more about the Incubator Activity, an initiative to foster development of emerging Web-related technologies. Incubator Activity work is not on the W3C standards track.

W3C Organizes Workshop on Access Control Application Scenarios W3C invites people to participate in a Workshop on Access Control Application Scenarios on 17-18 November 2009 in Luxembourg. This Workshop is intended to explore evolving application scenarios for access control technologies, such as XACML. Results from a number of recent European research projects in the grid, cloud computing, and privacy areas show overlapping use cases for these technologies that extend beyond classical intra-enterprise applications. The Workshop, co-financed by the European Commission 7th framework program via the PrimeLife project, is free of charge and open to anyone, subject to review of their statement of interest and space availability. Position papers are due 23 October. See the call for participation for more information. Learn more about the Privacy Activity.

Developer Gathering during W3C Technical Plenary Week As part of its efforts to broaden participation opportunities in W3C, W3C announces today its first Developer Gathering, to be held 5 November, 2009 during the W3C Technical Plenary Week (TPAC) in Santa Clara, California. Registration is open to the public; W3C is seeking in particular developers and designers who may not participate regularly in W3C groups. Arun Ranganathan (Mozilla), Fantasai, Philippe Le Hégaret, and others will speak on a variety of hot topics with a goal of feeding back comments to the groups developing the relevant technology standards. Learn more about the Developer Gathering.

CSS Working Group Updates Candidate Recommendation of CSS3 Media Queries The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Media Queries. HTML4 and CSS2 currently support media-dependent style sheets tailored for different media types. For example, a document may use sans-serif fonts when displayed on a screen and serif fonts when printed. "screen" and "print" are two media types that have been defined. Media queries extend the functionality of media types by allowing more precise labeling of style sheets. Learn more about the Style Activity.

New eGovernment Activity Focus Proposed; Guidelines for Publishing Open Government Data Published Today, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announces a draft work plan for the eGovernment Interest Group, whose mission is to document, advocate, coordinate and communicate best practices, solutions and approaches to improve the interface between citizens and government through effective use of Web standards. The draft charter, in review by the W3C community until the end of September, focuses on two topics: Open Government Data (OGD), and Education and Outreach. In line with its anticipated focus on Open Government Data, the group also announces today a first draft of Publishing Open Government Data, which provides step-by-step guidelines for putting government data on the Web. Sharing data according to these guidelines enables greater transparency; delivers more efficient public services; and encourages greater public and commercial use and re-use of government information. Learn more about the W3C eGovernment Activity.

New Draft of DOM Level 3 Events Published The WebApps Working Group has published a new Working Draft of DOM Level 3 Events, a generic platform- and language-neutral event system which allows registration of event handlers, describes event flow through a tree structure, and provides basic contextual information for each event. DOM3 Events introduces an advanced text and keyboard event model, including composition events for input-method editors and other internationalization issues. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity

Authoring HTML: Handling Right-to-left Scripts Group Note Published The Internationalization Core Working Group has published Authoring HTML: Handling Right-to-left Scripts as a Working Group Note. This document describes techniques for the use of HTML markup and CSS style sheets when creating content in languages that use right-to-left scripts, such as Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Thaana, Urdu, etc. It builds on (but also goes beyond) markup needed to supplement the Unicode bidirectional algorithm, and also touches on how to prepare content that will later be localized into right-to-left scripts. Learn more about the Internationalization Activity.

W3C Opens New India Office Today the W3C India Office opened at a new Host: the Department of Information Technology in the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology. Swaran Lata, who is Director of the Human Centered Computing division (TDIL), will run the new Office with the support of deputy manager Somnath Chandra. W3C Offices act as local points of contact for W3C work and help ensure that W3C and its specifications reach an international audience. W3C would like to thank the India Ministry of Communications and Information Technology for their support in ensuring that W3C has a strong presence in India. The previous Office in India, hosted by C-DAC, has already closed. Learn more about the W3C Offices program.

Online Training Course: An Introduction to W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices (Sep to Nov 2009) W3C announces today the next edition of its successful online course to introduce Web developers and designers to its Mobile Web Best Practices. The next session runs from 7 September to 9 November 2009. W3C received very positive reviews from participants who attended the previous session, including: "Every web developer should at least know the basics of mobile web development. So this is the course to take."

"The best starting point possible!"

"[The] tutor and student forum to discuss ideas or problems throughout the course was invaluable." W3C invites you to join the next session, where you will: learn about the specific promises and challenges of the mobile platform

learn how to use W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices to design mobile-friendly Web content and to adapt existing content for mobile

discover the relevant W3C resources for mobile Web design Participants have access to lectures and assignments that provide hands-on practical experience of using W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices. Participants will work with both W3C experts on this topic (the instructors) and peers who can share experiences about the real-world challenges of mobile Web design. More information is available about the course material (including a free sample), registration fee, and intended audience. Learn more about the Mobile Web Initiative.

W3C Announces Two New Co-Chairs for the HTML Working Group Tim Berners-Lee announced today that two people will join Sam Ruby (IBM) in co-Chairing the HTML Working GroupPaul Cotton (Microsoft) and Maciej Stachowiak (Apple). Chris Wilson has stepped down as co-Chair and indicated that he will be changing his focus to programmability in the web platform. As Berners-Lee wrote about this transition, "The work of this group is tremendously important to the Web. I am pleased that all three co-Chairs have taken on the responsibility for working closely with the editor and group to make HTML 5 a success." More information about the new Chairs is available in Berners-Lee's announcement. Learn more about the HTML Working Group.

HTML 5 Drafts Published The HTML Working Group has published Working Drafts of HTML 5 and HTML 5 differences from HTML 4. In HTML 5, new features are introduced to help Web application authors, new elements are introduced based on research into prevailing authoring practices, and special attention has been given to defining clear conformance criteria for user agents in an effort to improve interoperability. "HTML 5 differences from HTML 4" describes the differences between HTML 4 and HTML 5 and provides some of the rationale for the changes. Learn more about HTML.

XMLHttpRequest Drafts Published The Web Applications Working Group has published updates to Working Drafts of XMLHttpRequest and XMLHttpRequest Level 2. The XMLHttpRequest specification is part of the Web application technology stack, enabling Ajax-style development. XMLHttpRequest defines an API that provides scripted client functionality for transferring data between a client and a server. XMLHttpRequest Level 2 offers additional features, such as cross-origin requests, progress events, and the handling of byte streams for both sending and receiving. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

W3C Relaunches Multimodal Interaction Working Group W3C is pleased to announce the relaunch of the Multimodal Interaction Working Group to develop technology that enables users to use their preferred modes of interaction with the Web. Deborah Dahl (Invited Expert) chairs the group which is chartered to develop open standards to adapt to device, user and environmental conditions, and to allow multiple modes of Web interaction including GUI , speech, vision, pen, gestures, haptic interfaces, sensor data, etc. W3C Members may use this form to join the Working Group. Read about the Multimodal Interaction Activity.

Last Call: Widgets 1.0: APIs and Events The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: APIs and Events. Widgets are full-fledged client-side applications that are authored using Web standards. Examples range from simple clocks, stock tickers, news streamers, games and weather forecasters, to complex applications that pull data from multiple sources to be "mashed-up" and presented to a user in some interesting and useful way. The APIs and Events specification defines a set of APIs and events for the Widgets 1.0 family of specifications. Comments are welcome through 15 September. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Call for Review: XForms 1.1 Proposed Recommendation Published The Forms Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of XForms 1.1. XForms is not a free-standing document type, but is intended to be integrated into other markup languages, such as XHTML, ODF or SVG. XForms 1.1 refines the XML processing platform introduced by XForms 1.0 by adding several new submission capabilities, action handlers, utility functions, user interface improvements, and helpful datatypes as well as a more powerful action processing facility, including conditional, iterated and background execution, the ability to manipulate data arbitrarily and to access event context information. Comments are welcome through 22 September. Learn more about the XForms Activity.

Daniel Weitzner Named to Run US Government Internet Policy Unit Daniel Weitzner has been named Associate Administrator for the Office of Policy Analysis and Development at the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). Danny will have a leading role in fulfilling the NTIA's mandate to provide the President advice on telecommunications and information policy issues. Danny will thus be leaving the W3C staff, which he joined in 1998 as the Technology and Society Domain Lead. During these 11 years, Danny has contributed significantly to advances in many areas where policy meets technology, including privacy, security, intellectual property, and trust. As Chair of the Patent Policy Working Group, Danny led the effort that culminated in W3C's Royalty-Free Patent Policy, now a cornerstone of W3C's value proposition to the Web community. Before joining the W3C, Danny was co-founder and Deputy Director of the Center for Democracy and Technology and was Deputy Policy Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Danny is also Director of the the MIT CSAIL Decentralized Information Group with Tim Berners- Lee and a founding director of the Web Science Research Initiative and holds an appointment as Principal Research Scientist at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. While W3C regrets that Danny will be stepping down from W3C, it is encouraging that US policy may well be shaped by someone who has demonstrated a commitment to open standards as a tool for improving society. Danny, good luck!

W3C Invites Implementations of Widgets 1.0: Packaging and Configuration The Web Applications Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Widgets 1.0: Packaging and Configuration. This specification standardizes a packaging format for software known as widgets. Widgets are client-side applications that are authored using Web standards, but whose content can also be embedded into Web documents. The specification relies on PKWare's Zip specification as the archive format, XML as a configuration document format, and a series of steps that runtimes follow when processing and verifying various aspects of a package. The packaging format acts as a container for files used by a widget. The Working Group plans to develop a test suite during the Candidate Recommendation phase. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

W3C Organizes Workshop on Improving Access to Financial Data on the Web W3C invites people to participate in a Workshop on Improving Access to Financial Data on the Web on 5-6 October 2009 in Arlington, Virginia (USA). Workshop participants will discuss how to achieve greater transparency and more efficient reporting and analysis of business and financial data for companies and governments. The Workshop is jointly organized by W3C and XBRL International, with hosting support from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The extensible business reporting language (XBRL), is being widely adopted all around the world, and is set to become the standard way of recording, storing and transmitting business financial information. While effort on XBRL so far has gone into developing the standards and taxonomies of reporting concepts, comparatively little effort has been spent on how to exploit the expected flood of data. The goal of the Workshop is to identify opportunities, use cases, and challenges for interactive access to financial data expressed in XBRL and related languages, and the broader opportunities for using Semantic Web technologies. The Workshop is free of charge and open to anyone, subject to review of their statement of interest and space availability. Statements of interest (position papers) are due 21 August. See the call for participation for more information. Learn more about the Semantic Web.

Last Call: Geolocation API Specification The Geolocation Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Geolocation API Specification. The Geolocation API defines a high-level interface to location information associated only with the device hosting the implementation, such as latitude and longitude. Common sources of location information include Global Positioning System (GPS) and location inferred from network signals such as IP address, RFID, WiFi and Bluetooth MAC addresses, and GSM/CDMA cell IDs, as well as user input. Comments are welcome through 10 August. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity.

W3C Launches Device APIs and Policy Working Group W3C launched a new Device APIs and Policy Working Group, co-Chaired by Robin Berjon (Vodafone) and Frederick Hirsch (Nokia). The group's mission is to create client-side APIs that enable the development of Web Applications and Web Widgets that interact with devices services such as Calendar, Contacts, and Camera. Additionally, the group will produce a framework for the expression of security policies that govern access to security-critical APIs (such as the APIs listed previously). Per its charter, this group will conduct its work in public. Learn more about the Device APIs and Policy Working Group.

First Draft of SPARQL New Features and Rationale The SPARQL Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of SPARQL New Features and Rationale. This document provides an overview of the main new features of SPARQL and their rationale. This is an update to SPARQL adding several new features that have been agreed by the SPARQL WG. These language features were determined based on real applications and user and tool-developer experience. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

Steve Bratt to Assume Full-Time Role as Web Foundation CEO As of 30 June, Steven R. Bratt will step down from his role as W3C CEO in order to pursue full-time the role of CEO of the World Wide Web Foundation. The Web Foundation was announced in September 2008 with a mission to advance the Web, connect humanity, and empower people. Steve has been part-time CEO of the Web Foundation since then. While W3C COO and then CEO, Steve was responsible for W3C's worldwide operations and outreach, including overall management of Member relations, the W3C Process, the staff, strategic planning, budget, legal matters, external liaisons and major events. His purposeful and thoughtful leadership at W3C was informed by previous experiences in research, industry, and government, where he served on scientific and arms control delegations among others. While W3C seeks to fill the open position, Ralph Swick assumes Steve's leadership responsibilities. Thomas Roessler steps up in the interim to take on the role of Technology and Society Domain Lead. The mission of the Web Foundation complements that of W3C, and the two organizations will continue to coordinate their efforts to make the Web useful and available to all. W3C looks forward to Steve's successful leadership of the Web Foundation.

Note Published: W3C mobileOK Scheme 1.0 The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has published a Group Note of W3C mobileOK Scheme 1.0. W3C's mobileOK is designed to improve the Web experience for users of mobile devices by rewarding content providers that adhere to good practice when delivering content to them. This document describes the mobileOK scheme, which allows content providers to promote their content as being suitable for use on very basic mobile devices. Learn more about the Mobile Web Initiative Activity.

W3C Invites Implementations of Widgets 1.0: Digital Signatures The Web Applications Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Widgets 1.0: Digital Signatures. Widgets are full-fledged client-side applications that are authored using Web standards and packaged for distribution. This document defines a profile of the XML Signature Syntax and Processing 1.1 specification to allow a widget package to be digitally signed, helping to ensure continuity of authorship and distributorship. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

First Draft Published for Ontology for Media Resource 1.0 The Media Annotations Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Ontology for Media Resource 1.0. This specification defines an ontology for cross-community data integration of information related to media resources, with a particular focus on media resources on the Web. The ontology is supposed to foster interoperability and counter the current proliferation of video metadata formats by providing full or partial translation and mapping towards existing formats. Learn more about the Video in the Web Activity.

W3C Launches Open Web Education Alliance Incubator Group W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the Open Web Education Alliance Incubator Group, whose mission is to help enhance and standardize the architecture of the World Wide Web by facilitating the highest quality standards and best practice based education for future generations of Web professionals. The goal of this Incubator Group is to bring together interested individuals, companies, and organizations with a strong interest in the field of educating Web professionals, to explore the needs and issues around the topic of Web development education. The group will be chaired by John Allsopp. The following W3C Members have sponsored the charter for this group: Adobe Systems Inc.; Mitsue-Links Co., Ltd; and Opera Software. Read more about the Incubator Activity, an initiative to foster development of emerging Web-related technologies. Incubator Activity work is not on the W3C standards track.

Last Call: Delivery Context Ontology The Ubiquitous Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Delivery Context Ontology. A "Delivery Context" is a source of information that can help create context-aware applications, thus providing a compelling user experience. The Delivery Context Ontology specification provides a formal model of the characteristics of the environment in which devices interact with the Web or other services. The Delivery Context includes the characteristics of the Device, the software used to access the service and the Network providing the connection among others. Comments are welcome through 07 July. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity.

Call for Review: SKOS Reference Proposed Recommendation The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group has published the Proposed Recommendation of SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System Reference. SKOS provides a common data model for sharing and linking knowledge organization systems via the Web. SKOS is a vocabulary for expressing the basic structure and content of concept schemes such as thesauri, classification schemes, subject heading schemes, taxonomies, folksonomies, and other similar types of controlled vocabulary. As an application of the Resource Description Framework (RDF), SKOS allows concepts to be composed and published on the World Wide Web, linked with data on the Web and integrated into other concept schemes. Along with this publication of the SKOS Reference Proposed Recommendation the Working Group has published an updated SKOS Primer Working Draft. Comments are welcome through 15 July. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

W3C Celebrates Semantic Web Progress at SemTech 2009 W3C technical staff and more than 30 W3C Member organizations will present at the Semantic Technology Conference (SemTech) this week in San Jose, California. Sessions led by W3C staff and Member organizations highlight the accelerating rate of adoption and deployment of Semantic Web technologies in the past year. "We have gathered a growing number of Semantic Web use cases and case studies in the past 12 months," said Ivan Herman, Semantic Web Activity Lead for W3C and one of the presenters. "What thrills me is the diversity of application areas for the Semantic Web, including more software, services and tools, as well as successful deployment in business and industry." Read the full press release and learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

UK Government Moves to Put Data on the Web Today the Office of the Prime Minister in the UK announced that Tim Berners-Lee will "help drive opening of access to Government data on the web over the coming months." The announcement is an important step in helping to fulfill the vision for a Web of Linked Open Data built on W3C's open Semantic Web standards, espoused by Berners-Lee in his TED 2009 talk. "Government data — the people's data — is an important component to the larger Linked Open Data movement," said Berners-Lee. "I look forward to working with multiple government agencies and local enthusiasts to help early adopters bring their data to the bigger picture." In April, Berners-Lee engaged similarly with the US government offering to help them join the "rapidly growing Linked Open Data cloud, to which US recovery data will be a welcome addition." W3C's own eGovernment Interest Group has also been actively building an international network of support to work with governments on issues of transparency, accountability, and efficiency through open data. Learn more about W3C's eGovernment and Semantic Web Activities.

Last Call: WebCGM 2.1 The WebCGM Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of WebCGM 2.1. Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM) is an ISO standard, defined by ISO/IEC 8632:1999, for the interchange of 2D vector and mixed vector/raster graphics. WebCGM is a profile of CGM, which adds Web linking and is optimized for Web applications in technical illustration, electronic documentation, geophysical data visualization, and similar fields. First published (1.0) in 1999, WebCGM unifies potentially diverse approaches to CGM utilization in Web document applications. It therefore represents a significant interoperability agreement amongst major users and implementers of the ISO CGM standard. Comments are welcome through 02 July. Learn more about the Graphics Activity.

W3C Invites Implementations of SOAP over Java Message Service 1.0 The SOAP-JMS Binding Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of SOAP over Java Message Service 1.0. The work described in this and related documents is aimed at a set of standards for the transport of SOAP messages over JMS [Java Message Service]. The main purpose is to ensure interoperability between the implementations of different Web services vendors. It should also enable customers to implement their own Web services for part of their infrastructure, and to have this interoperate with vendor provided Web services. The main audience will be implementers of Web services stacks; in particular people who wish to extend a Web services stack with an implementation of SOAP/JMS. This document specifies how SOAP should bind to a messaging system that supports the Java Message Service (JMS). Learn more about the Web Services Activity.

W3C Advisory Committee Elects Advisory Board The W3C Advisory Committee has filled four 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, the nine Advisory Board participants are Jean-François Abramatic (IBM), Ann Bassetti (The Boeing Company), Jim Bell (HP), Don Deutsch (Oracle), Eduardo Gutentag (Sun Microsystems), Ora Lassila (Nokia), Charles McCathieNevile (Opera Software), Takeshi Natsuno (Keio University), and Arun Ranganathan (Mozilla). Steve Zilles continues as interim Advisory Board Chair. Read more about the Advisory Board.

Last Call: Widgets 1.0: Packaging and Configuration The Web Applications Working Group has published the Last Call Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: Packaging and Configuration. This document standardizes a packaging format for a class of software application known as a widget. Widgets are full-fledged client-side applications that are authored using Web standards and packaged for distribution. They are typically downloaded and installed on a client machine or device where they run as stand-alone applications, but they can also be embedded into Web pages and run in a Web browser. Examples range from simple clocks, stock tickers, news casters, games and weather forecasters, to complex applications that pull data from multiple sources to be "mashed-up" and presented to a user in some interesting and useful way. Comments are welcome through 19 June. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

W3C Opens Senegal Office W3C announces today the launch of the W3C Senegal Office, hosted by the Ecole Supérieure Polytechnique (ESP), attached to the UCAD (Université Cheikh Anta Diop), in Dakar, Senegal. Ibrahima Ngom (ESP) and Alex Corenthin (ISOC Senegal) will jointly manage this new W3C Office. W3C looks forward to increasing interaction with the French-speaking community, especially neighboring countries in West Africa. The opening ceremony will take place 27 May. Read the press release and learn more about the W3C Offices, which assist W3C with promotion efforts in local languages, help broaden W3C’s geographical base, and encourage international participation in W3C Activities.

Online Training Course: An Introduction to W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices W3C announces today an online course to introduce Web developers and designers to its Mobile Web Best Practices. The course runs from 1 June to 31 July 2009. Participants will: learn about the specific promises and challenges of the mobile platform

learn how to use W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices to design mobile-friendly Web content and to adapt existing content for mobile

discover the relevant W3C resources for mobile Web design Participants will have access to lectures and assignments that provide hands-on practical experience of using W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices. Participants will work with both W3C experts on this topic (the instructors) and peers who can share experiences about the real-world challenges of mobile Web design. More information is available about the course material (including a free sample), registration fee, and intended audience. Learn more about the Mobile Web Initiative.

W3C to Participate in SVG Open 2009 W3C will again this year sponsor SVG Open 2009, the 7th international conference on Scalable Vector Graphics, hosted by Google in Mountain View, California on 2-4 October 2009. SVG Open provides an opportunity for designers, developers and implementers to share ideas, experiences, products and strategies. Members of the W3C SVG Working Group will be attending and presenting at the conference, which will include a Working Group panel session on future SVG developments. A day of workshops will also be scheduled adjacent to the main conference. The conference organizers have indicated that proposals for presentation abstracts and course outlines are welcome through 15 May. Learn more about the W3C Graphics Activity.

State Chart XML (SCXML) Working Draft Published The Voice Browser Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of State Chart XML (SCXML): State Machine Notation for Control Abstraction. SCXML is a general-purpose event-based state machine language that may be used in a number of ways, including as a high-level dialog language controlling VoiceXML 3.0's encapsulated speech modules, or as a multimodal control language in the MultiModal Interaction framework. The main differences from the previous draft are (1) a revision of the send and invoke elements and (2) the introduction of Event I/O processors to support them. Learn more about the Voice Browser Activity.

XML Signature Properties Draft Published The XML Security Working Group has published a Working Draft of XML Signature Properties. This document outlines proposed standard XML Signature Properties syntax and processing rules and an associated namespace for these properties. The intent is these can be composed with any version of XML Signature using the XML SignatureProperties element. Learn more about the Security Activity.

First Draft of Use cases and requirements for Media Fragments The Media Fragments Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Use cases and requirements for Media Fragments. The aim of this specification is to enhance the Web infrastructure for supporting the addressing and retrieval of subparts of time-based Web resources. Example uses are the sharing of such fragment URIs with friends via email, the automated creation of such fragment URIs in a search engine interface, or the annotation of media fragments with RDF. This specification will help make video a first-class citizen of the World Wide Web. In addition to describing use cases for the Media Fragments 1.0 specification, this document discusses syntax and processing of media fragment URIs, and offers survey of technologies that address multimedia fragments. Learn more about the Video in the Web Activity.

Last Call: Widgets 1.0: Digital Signatures; Widgets Requirements Updated The Web Applications Working Group has published the Last Call Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: Digital Signatures. This document defines a profile of the XML Signature Syntax and Processing 1.1 specification to allow a widget package to be digitally signed. Widget authors and distributors can digitally sign widgets as a mechanism to ensure continuity of authorship and distributorship. A user agent can use the digital signature to verify the integrity of the widget package and to confirm the signing key(s). Comments are welcome through 01 June. The Working Group also published an updated Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: Requirements. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Three First Drafts of SVG Modules Published The Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Working Group published three first public drafts today. SVG is a language for describing vector graphics, but it is typically rendered to a display or some form of print medium. The first new publication, SVG Compositing, adds support for raster and vector objects to be combined to produce eye catching effects via advanced alpha compositing, masks, and clipping paths. The other specifications are for SVG Referenced Parameter Variables: Part 1: Primer and Part 2: Language. The Referenced Parameter Variables specification provides a declarative way to incorporate parameter values into SVG content. Often, users may wish to create a single resource, and reuse it several times with specified variations, and this specification provides a means to do so without the use of script. Learn more about the Graphics Activity.

CSS 2.1 Candidate Recommendation Updated The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group updated the Candidate Recommendation of Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 Revision 1 (CSS 2.1) Specification. CSS 2.1 is a style sheet language that allows authors and users to attach style (e.g., fonts and spacing) to structured documents (e.g., HTML documents and XML applications). CSS 2.1 corrects a few errors in CSS2 (the most important being a new definition of the height/width of absolutely positioned elements, more influence for HTML's "style" attribute and a new calculation of the 'clip' property), and adds a few highly requested features which have already been widely implemented. But most of all CSS 2.1 represents a "snapshot" of CSS usage: it consists of all CSS features that are implemented interoperably. This draft incorporates errata resulting from implementation experience since the previous publication. Learn more about the Style Activity.

W3C Invites Implementations of Media Queries The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Media Queries. HTML4 and CSS2 currently support media-dependent style sheets tailored for different media types. For example, a document may use sans-serif fonts when displayed on a screen and serif fonts when printed. ‘screen’ and ‘print’ are two media types that have been defined. Media Queries extend the functionality of media types by allowing presentations to be tailored more precisely to device characteristics. Learn more about the Style Activity.

Widgets 1.0: APIs and Events Draft Published The Web Applications Working Group has published a Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: APIs and Events. Widgets are full-fledged client-side applications that are authored using Web standards. Examples range from simple clocks, stock tickers, news streamers, games and weather forecasters, to complex applications that pull data from multiple sources to be "mashed-up" and presented to a user in some interesting and useful way The APIs and Events specification defines a set of APIs and events for the Widgets 1.0 family of specifications. The specification allows application writers to access widget configuration information, monitor changes in the widget display, determine locale information, monitor updates to the widget, and more. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

First Draft: Usage Patterns For Client-Side URI parameters The Technical Architecture Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Usage Patterns For Client-Side URI parameters. The goal of this draft TAG finding is to initially collect the various usage scenarios that are leading to innovative uses of client-side URI parameters, along with the solutions that have been developed by the Web community. As highly interactive applications get built using Web parts (HTML, CSS and JavaScript component resources) that are themselves Web addressable, there is an increasing need for encoding interaction state as part of the URI. The Web is beginning to discover and codify design patterns based on fragment identifiers for many of these use cases. Learn more about the Technical Architecture Group.

Note Published: W3C Personalization Roadmap: Ubiquitous Web Integration of AccessForAll 1.0 The Ubiquitous Web Applications Working Group has published the Group Note of W3C Personalization Roadmap: Ubiquitous Web Integration of AccessForAll 1.0. This document describes an activity of integrating personalization with device context for the delivery of content materials and interface components that are customized to meet both individual personal needs and preferences and delivery context. It brings together the work of separate standards and specifications organizations and working groups, notably W3C Ubiquitous Web Applications working group, IMS Global Learning Consortium Accessibility Special Interest group, ISO/IEC JTC1 SC36 Information Technology for Learning, Education and Training: Human Diversity and Access For All working group and associated working groups in SC36. The document should be viewed as a roadmap for the work to be undertaken and includes description of the basis for the work, the organizational context, the likely technologies and a partially complete description of how the technologies fit together. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity.

Efficient XML Interchange Evaluation Draft Published The Efficient XML Interchange Working Group has published a Working Draft of Efficient XML Interchange Evaluation. This document presents the anticipated benefits of the EXI format 1.0 compared to XML and gzipped XML. Additionally, tests for compactness include comparison to ASN.1 PER. The points of comparison are the requirements set by the EXI Working Group charter, based on the results of the XML Binary Characterization Working Group. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity.

W3C Invites Developers to Mobile Widgets, Social Web Camps During WWW2009 W3C invites people to attend the W3C Track at WWW2009, in Madrid, Spain on 23-24 April 2009. Part of WWW2009, the first day of the track is a Mobile Widgets Camp and the second a Social Web Camp. Conference participants and the local developer community are invited to submit topics of discussion in advance, via the W3C Track wikis. In addition to the W3C Track, Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director and inventor of the Web, will deliver the WWW2009 opening keynote titled "Twenty Years: Looking Forward, Looking Back". Read the press release.

W3C Launches Social Web Incubator Group W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the Social Web Incubator Group. The group's mission is to understand the systems and technologies that permit the description and identification of people, groups, organizations, and user-generated content in extensible and privacy-respecting ways. The group will be co-chaired by Dan Appelquist (Vodafone), Dan Brickley (Vrije Universiteit), Harry Halpin (W3C Fellow from the University of Edinburgh with support from Eduserv). The following W3C Members have sponsored the charter for this group: ASemantics, Boeing, Cisco, DERI Galway at the National University of Ireland, Garlik, Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA), Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications (IIT-NCSR), NICTA, Rochester Institute of Technology, SUN Microsystems, Talis, Telecom Italia, University of Bristol, University of Edinburgh, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, University of Versailles, Vrije Universiteit, and Vodafone. Read more about the Incubator Activity, an initiative to foster development of emerging Web-related technologies. Incubator Activity work is not on the W3C standards track.

CSS Template Layout Module The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published the Working Draft of CSS Template Layout Module. This specification is part of level 3 of CSS (“CSS3”) and contains features to describe layouts at a high level, meant for tasks such as the positioning and alignment of “widgets” in a graphical user interface or the layout grid for a page or a window, in particular when the desired visual order is different from the order of the elements in the source document. Learn more about the Style Activity.

eGovernment Stakeholder Meeting Summary Published The W3C's eGovernment Interest Group has published a Meeting Summary from its 12-13 March eGovernment stakeholder meeting in Washington, D.C. The purpose of the meeting was to obtain feedback on the First Public Working Draft of the group's Improving Access to Government through Better Use of the Web, published on 1 March 2009. Featured speakers at the meeting included Beth Noveck, US Office of Science and Technology Policy, Ellen Miller, Sunlight Foundation, and Steve Ressler, GovLoop, as well as meeting co-chairs Kevin Novak, American Institute of Architects, John Sheridan, UK National Archives, and W3C Team contact Jose Alonso. Key subject areas addressed by participants were: Openness and Transparency in Government; Social Networking; Data Interoperability and Semantic Web in Government; and Multi-Channel Deliver and Information Access via Mobile Platforms. The term "eGovernment" refers to the use of the Web or other information technologies by governing bodies (local, state, federal, multi-national) to interact with their citizenry, between departments and divisions, and between governments themselves. Learn more about the W3C's eGovernment Activity.

Widgets 1.0: Digital Signatures Draft Published The Web Applications Working Group has published a Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: Digital Signatures. This document defines a profile of the XML Signature Syntax and Processing 1.1 specification to allow a widget package to be digitally signed. Widget authors and distributors can digitally sign widgets as a trust and quality assurance mechanism. Prior to instantiation, a user agent can use the digital signature to verify the integrity of the widget package and perform source authentication. This document specifies conformance requirements on both widget packages and user agents. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

OWL 2 Web Ontology Language Document Overview The OWL Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of OWL 2 Web Ontology Language Document Overview. This document, part 1 of 13 in the OWL 2 document set, serves as an introduction to OWL 2 and the various other OWL 2 documents. It describes the various syntaxes for OWL 2, the different kinds of semantics, the defined profiles (sub-languages), and the differences between OWL 1 and OWL 2. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

Cross-Origin Resource Sharing Draft Published The Web Applications Working Group has published the Working Draft of Cross-Origin Resource Sharing. This document defines a mechanism to enable client-side cross-origin requests. Specifications that want to enable cross-origin requests in an API they define can use the algorithms defined by this specification. If such an API is used on http://example.org resources, a resource on http://hello-world.example can opt in using the mechanism described by this specification (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. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Last Call: Selectors Level 3 The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published the Last Call Working Draft of Selectors Level 3. 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. Comments are welcome through 07 April. Learn more about the Style Activity.

W3C Launches Semantic Sensor Network Incubator Group W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the Semantic Sensor Network Incubator Group, sponsored by W3C Members CSIRO, Wright State University, and OGC. The group's mission is to begin the formal process of producing ontologies that define the capabilities of sensors and sensor networks, and to develop semantic annotations of a key language used by services based sensor networks. Read more about the Incubator Activity, an initiative to foster development of emerging Web-related technologies. Incubator Activity work is not on the W3C standards track.

Last Call: Web Security Context: User Interface Guidelines The Web Security Context Working Group has published the second Last Call Working Draft of Web Security Context: User Interface Guidelines. This specification deals with the trust decisions that users must make online, and with ways to support them in making safe and informed decisions where possible. In order to achieve that goal, this specification includes recommendations on the presentation of identity information by Web user agents. It also includes recommendations for handling errors in security protocols. This second Last Call Working Draft incorporates feedback gathered during the first Last Call period, both from the public and from implementers participating in the Working Group. Comments are welcome through 19 March 2009. Learn more about the Security Activity.

W3C Open Meeting: Realizing Government Transparency and Openness On 12-13 March, W3C's eGovernment Interest Group will hold a special stakeholder meeting in Washington, DC to address a number of issues of high interest to government policy makers, elected officials, and managers of government information technology. Participants will document progressive solutions for electronic government and develop a road map for developing Web standards related to topics such as participation and citizen engagement, open government data, identification and authentication, and long-term data management. The meeting is open to the public, but advance registration is required and seating is limited. W3C thanks the American Institute of Architects for hosting this meeting. Read the media advisory and learn more about the W3C eGovernment Activity.

Widgets 1.0: APIs and Events The Web Applications Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: APIs and Events. This specification defines a set of APIs and events for the Widgets 1.0 Family of Specifications that enable baseline functionality for widgets. The APIs and Events defined by this specification defines, amongst other things, the means to: access the metadata declared in a widget's configuration document,

receive events related to changes in the view state of a widget,

determine the locale under which a widget is currently running,

be notified of events relating to the widget being updated,

invoke a widget to open a URL on the system's default browser,

requests the user's attention in a device independent manner,

and check if any additional APIs requested via the configuration document's feature element have successfully loaded. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

Incubator Group Report: RDB2RDF The RDB2RDF Incubator Group published their final report. In the report, the group recommends that the W3C initiate a WG to standardize a language for mapping Relational Database schemas into RDF and OWL. 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.

Incubator Group Report: Emergency Information Interoperability Framework (EIIF) The Emergency Information Interoperability Framework (EIIF) Incubator Group published their final report. The group also published Emergency Information Interoperability Frameworks, which describes some critical requirements for an interoperability information framework for emergency management, and provides candidate components of an ontology that can support interoperability for some common use cases. The approach discussed outlines how one can achieve information interoperability across the stakeholder functions within the area of emergency management. The group recommends that W3C initiate an Interest Group to continue the work of the Incubator Group and expand the outreach to standards development through partnerships with professional communities and interoperability workshops. 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.

Tim Berners-Lee Speaks at TED2009 Tim Berners-Lee, Director of W3C, addresses TED2009 today in Long Beach, California on the subject of Linked Data. Berners-Lee's talk highlights the many possibilities that arise when governments, enterprises, scientists, and others in the community choose to share and link data on the Web using Web standards.

Working Draft: WebCGM 2.1 The WebCGM Working Group has published a Working Draft of WebCGM 2.1. Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM) is an ISO standard, defined by ISO/IEC 8632:1999, for the interchange of 2D vector and mixed vector/raster graphics. WebCGM is a profile of CGM, which adds Web linking and is optimized for Web applications in technical illustration, electronic documentation, geophysical data visualization, and similar fields. First published (1.0) in 1999, WebCGM unifies potentially diverse approaches to CGM utilization in Web document applications. It therefore represents a significant interoperability agreement amongst major users and implementers of the ISO CGM standard. Learn more about the Graphics Activity.

Last Call: W3C XML Schema Definition Language (XSD) 1.1 The XML Schema Working Group has published the Last Call Working Drafts of W3C XML Schema Definition Language (XSD) 1.1 Part 1: Structures and Part 2: Datatypes. This former specifies the XML Schema Definition Language, which offers facilities for describing the structure and constraining the contents of XML documents, including those which exploit the XML Namespace facility. The schema language, which is itself represented in an XML vocabulary and uses namespaces, substantially reconstructs and considerably extends the capabilities found in XML document type definitions (DTDs). The latter defines facilities for defining datatypes to be used in XML Schemas as well as other XML specifications. The datatype language, which is itself represented in XML, provides a superset of the capabilities found in XML document type definitions (DTDs) for specifying datatypes on elements and attributes. Comments are welcome through 20 February. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity.

HTML 5 Receives Support for Authoring Materials Dan Connolly, an active member of the HTML community for many years, has received support from Adobe to work on HTML 5 materials for authors. The HTML Working Group Chairs have requested additional resources to ensure that HTML 5 meets the needs of authors and browser developers alike. As a provider of Web development and authoring tools, W3C Member Adobe is not only participating in the Working Group, they have also provided financial support for the open standards process. Learn more about HTML.

Note: XHTML Media Types - Second Edition The XHTML2 Working Group has published the Group Note of XHTML Media Types - Second Edition. Many people want to use XHTML to author their Web pages, but are confused about the best ways to deliver those pages in such a way that they will be processed correctly by various user agents. This Note contains suggestions about how to format XHTML to ensure it is maximally portable, and how to deliver XHTML to various user agents - even those that do not yet support XHTML natively. This document is intended to be used by document authors who want to use XHTML today, but want to be confident that their XHTML content is going to work in the greatest number of environments. Learn more about the HTML Activity.

XML Base (Second Edition) Is a W3C Recommendation The XML Core Working Group has published the W3C Recommendation of XML Base (Second Edition). This document describes a mechanism for providing base URI services to XLink, but as a modular specification so that other XML applications benefiting from additional control over relative URIs but not built upon XLink can also make use of it. The syntax consists of a single XML attribute named xml:base. The functionality is similar to the base element in HTML. This document is part of W3C's ongoing work to maintain the core XML technologies. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity.

W3C Invites Implementations of CURIE Syntax 1.0 The XHTML2 Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of CURIE Syntax 1.0. This document defines a generic, abbreviated syntax for expressing URIs. This syntax is intended to be used as a common element by language designers. The intended audience for this document is Language designers, not the users of those Languages. Track implementations in an ongoing implementation report and learn more about the HTML Activity.

Future of Social Networking Workshop Begins Today began a 2-day Workshop on the Future of Social Networking, organized by W3C to explore the landscape of social networking technologies. Participants submitted 72 position papers on a wide range of topics regarding the growth and future of social networking, including, but not limited to, the mobile context. The meeting is hosted in Barcelona, Spain by Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and ReadyPeople. Many thanks to the hosts and to Silver Sponsors Ayuntamiento de Zaragoza, Flock, and Peperoni for their support.