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2008-08-15: Web-based video is exploding, for advertising, enterprise collaboration, entertainment, product reviews, and other applications. As prices drop for consumer electronics, amateur and professionals alike are creating increasingly high quality videos. Social networks are sprouting up around Web-delivered media. W3C today launched a new Video in the Web Activity to make video a "first-class citizen" of the Web. The initial scope of work, determined as a result of a successful W3C Workshop on Video will be conducted by three groups:
W3C continues to investigate the important topics of audio and video codecs on the Web. Learn more about the new Video in the Web Activity. (Photo credit: Bob Freund. Permalink)
2008-09-01: Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel. (Permalink)
2008-08-29: The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group has published the Last Call 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 Web. The SKOS data model provides a standard, low-cost migration path for porting existing knowledge organization systems to the Semantic Web. SKOS also provides a light weight, intuitive language for developing and sharing new knowledge organization systems. It may be used on its own, or in combination with formal knowledge representation languages such as the Web Ontology language (OWL). Comments are welcome through 03 October. The group has also published an update of the companion SKOS Primer. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)
2008-08-29: The Web Applications Working Group has published the Working Draft of Web IDL. This specification defines a syntactic subset of OMG IDL version 3.0 for use by specifications that define interfaces. Web IDL is an IDL variant with a number of features that allow the behavior of common script objects in the web platform to be specified more readily. A number of extensions are given to the IDL to support common functionality that previously must have been written in prose. In addition, precise language bindings for ECMAScript 3rd Edition and Java are given. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. (Permalink)
2008-08-29: The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group has published the Group Note 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). It is intended for the creators and maintainers of vocabularies in RDFS and OWL (vocabulary and ontology are used interchangeably in the context of this specification). It provides step-by-step instructions for publishing vocabularies on the Web, giving example configurations designed to cover the most common cases. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)
2008-08-20: W3C announced today its new Licenses for W3C Test Suites. Two licenses promote two goals:
W3C appreciates the support of those who suggested these changes, who provided use cases, and who patiently reviewed drafts. (Permalink)
2008-08-18: The Voice Browser Working Group has published the Proposed Recommendation of Pronunciation Lexicon Specification (PLS) Version 1.0. PLS provides the basis for describing pronunciation information for use in speech recognition and speech synthesis, for use in tuning applications, e.g., for proper names that have irregular pronunciations. Changes from the previous Working Draft can be found in Appendix D of the specification. Comments are welcome through 18 September. Learn more about the Voice Browser Activity. (Permalink)
2008-08-18: The Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER) Working Group has published five Working Drafts. The purpose of the Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER) is to provide a means for individuals or organizations to describe a group of resources through the publication of machine-readable metadata.
Last Call comments are welcome through 14 September. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)
2008-08-14: The XML Processing Model Working Group has published the Last Call Working Draft of XProc: An XML Pipeline Language. This specification describes the syntax and semantics of XProc: An XML Pipeline Language, a language for describing operations to be performed on XML documents. A pipeline consists of steps. Like pipelines, steps take zero or more XML documents as their inputs and produce zero or more XML documents as their outputs. Comments are welcome through 26 September. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. (Permalink)
2008-08-13: The Web Applications Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Element Traversal Specification. This specification defines the ElementTraversal interface, intended to provide a more convenient alternative to existing Document Object Model (DOM) navigation interfaces, with a low implementation footprint. It does so by allowing script navigation of the elements of a DOM tree, excluding all other nodes in the DOM, such as text nodes. It also provides an attribute to expose the number of child elements of an element. See the disposition of Last Call Comments and learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. (Permalink)
2008-08-08: The Voice Browser Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) 3.0 Requirements. VoiceXML 2.0 is designed for creating audio dialogs that feature synthesized speech, digitized audio, recognition of spoken and DTMF key input, recording of spoken input, telephony, and mixed initiative conversations. VoiceXML 3.0 is the next major release of VoiceXML. Its purpose is to provide even more powerful dialog capabilities that can be used to build advanced speech applications and to provide these capabilities in a form that can be easily and cleanly integrated with other W3C languages. Learn more about the Voice Browser Activity. (Permalink)
2008-08-06: The Protocols and Formats Working Group published an updated Working Draft of Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA). 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. WAI-ARIA is introduced in the WAI-ARIA Overview and the WAI-ARIA FAQ. Read the updated WAI-ARIA Specification announcement that requests feedback on host language embedding, and about the Web Accessibility Initiative. (Permalink)
2008-08-07: The XML Query Working Group has published the Candidate Recommendation of XQuery Update Facility 1.0. This document defines an update facility that extends the XML Query language, XQuery. The XQuery Update Facility provides expressions that can be used to make persistent changes to instances of the XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Data Model. This document incorporates changes made against the Candidate Recommendation of 14 March 2008. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. (Permalink)
2008-08-01: The CSS Working Group has published a Candidate Recommendation for CSS Mobile Profile 2.0., which defines a common baseline of CSS support that even constrained mobile devices can provide. This effort is part of W3C's ongoing efforts to make the Web easier to use from a mobile devices (see related news). For the CSS Mobile Profile 2.0, W3C has worked closely together with OMA to remove the differences between W3C's and OMA's previous CSS-mobile profiles. An "alpha" quality test suite is available for the mobile profile. The Working Group will track implementations during the Candidate Recommendation phase. Implementers are invited to send feedback before February 2009. Learn more about the Style Activity. (Permalink)
2008-08-01: The Rule Interchange Format (RIF) Working Group published six documents yesterday:
"RIF Basic Logic Dialect" (BLD) specifies an XML format for rules at an intermediate expressive power. The language is roughly Horn rules with URIs, datatypes, and builtins. This goes beyond datalog (it has function terms), but does not provide any kind of negation. "RIF RDF and OWL Compatibility" explains and specifies how RIF rulesets are to be used in combination with RDF and OWL. Comments on these documents welcome until 19 September. In addition, RIF Production Rule Dialect (PRD) specifies an XML format for the exchange of production rules. PRD and BLD are expected to be the basis of the two main dialect-branches, with RIF Core being the things in common between the two. RIF Framework for Logic Dialects (FLD) and RIF Datatypes and Builtins (DTB) provide common elements for specific dialects to use. RIF Uses Cases and Requirements (UCR), last published about two years ago, has been simplified and now has examples written in the PRD and BLD presentation syntaxes. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)
2008-08-01: The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Content Transformation Guidelines 1.0. Content Transformation is the manipulation in various ways, by proxies, of requests made to and content delivered by an origin server with a view to making it more suitable for mobile presentation. The overall objective of this document is to provide a means, as far as is practical, for users to be provided with at least a "functional user experience" when accessing the Web with a mobile device. Comments are welcome through 16 September. Learn more about the Mobile Web Initiative. (Permalink)
2008-08-01: The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of CSS Marquee Module Level 3. CSS describes the rendering of documents on various media. When documents (e.g., HTML) are laid out on visual media (e.g., screen or print) and the contents of some element are too large for a given area, CSS allows the designer to specify whether and how the overflow is displayed. One way, available on certain devices, is the "marquee" effect: the content is animated and moves automatically back and forth. This module defines the properties to control that effect. Comments are welcome through 01 September. Learn more about the Style Activity. (Permalink)
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