# World Wide Web Consortium - Web Standards
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. W3C primarily pursues its mission through the creation of Web standards and guidelines designed to ensure long-term growth for the Web. Over 400 organizations are Members of the Consortium. W3C is jointly run by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the USA, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France, Keio University in Japan, and [cut: 630 characters, first 596 kept]
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## Leading the Web to Its Full Potential...

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The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential. W3C is a forum for information, commerce, communication, and collective understanding. On this page, you'll find W3C news, links to W3C technologies and ways to get involved. New visitors can find help in Finding Your Way at W3C. We encourage organizations to learn more about W3C and about W3C Membership.

## News

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### Six XML Security Documents Published

2009-07-31: The XML Security Working Group published six documents related to XML signature and encryption. XML Signatures provide integrity, message authentication, and/or signer authentication services for data of any type, whether located within the XML that includes the signature or elsewhere.

- XML Signature Best Practices. This Working Draft describes best practices related to improving security and mitigating attacks, yet others are for best practices in the practical use of XML Signature, such as signing XML that doesn't use namespaces, for example.
- XML Signature Syntax and Processing Version 1.1. This Working Draft updates the signature specification.
- XML Signature Transform Simplification: Requirements and Design. This Working Draft outlines a proposed simplification of the XML Signature Transform mechanism, intended to enhance security, performance, streamability and to ease adoption.
- W3C XML Encryption Syntax and Processing Version 1.1. This Working Draft updates the encryption specification.
- XML Security Generic Hybrid Ciphers. This First Public Working Draft augments XML Encryption Version 1.1 by defining algorithms, XML types and elements necessary to enable use of generic hybrid ciphers in XML Security applications.
- XML Security Algorithm Cross-Reference. This Group Note collects the various known URIs for encryption algorithms (at the time of its publication) and indicates which specifications define them.

Learn more about the Security Activity. (Permalink)

### Daniel Weitzner Named to Run US Government Internet Policy Unit

2009-07-30: 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! (Permalink)

### W3C Invites Implementations of Widgets 1.0: Packaging and Configuration

2009-07-24: 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. (Permalink)

### User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) 2.0: Updated Working Draft

2009-07-23: The User Agent Accessibility Guidelines Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) 2.0. UAAG defines how browsers, media players, and other "user agents" should support accessibility for people with disabilities and work with assistive technologies. Read the invitation to review the UAAG 2.0 Working Draft and about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). (Permalink)

### Flexible Box Layout Module First Draft Published

2009-07-23: The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Flexible Box Layout Module. The draft describes a CSS box model optimized for interface design. It provides an additional layout system alongside the ones already in CSS. This model is based on the box model in the XUL user-interface language. Learn more about the Style Activity. (Permalink)

### CSS Image Values Module Level 3 First Draft Published

2009-07-23: The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of CSS Image Values Module Level 3. This CSS Image Values module defines the syntax for image values in CSS. Image values can be a single URI to an image, a list of URIs denoting a series of fallbacks, sprites (image slices), or gradients. Learn more about the Style Activity. (Permalink)

### W3C Organizes Workshop on Improving Access to Financial Data on the Web

2009-07-16: 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. (Permalink)

### Best Practices for Authoring HTML: Handling Right-to-left Scripts Draft Published

2009-07-15: The Internationalization Core Working Group has published the Working Draft of Best Practices for Authoring HTML: Handling Right-to-left Scripts. This document provides advice for the use of HTML markup and CSS style sheets to create pages for languages that use right-to-left scripts, such as Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Thaana, Urdu, etc. It explains how to create content in right-to-left scripts that builds on but goes beyond the Unicode bidirectional algorithm, as well as how to prepare content for localization into right-to-left scripts. Learn more about the Internationalization Activity. (Permalink)

### XML Signature Correction Addresses Security Issue

2009-07-14: The XML Security Working Group has published a proposed correction to the XML Signature specification. The correction addresses a specification-level security issue that can lead to an authentication bypass (CVE-2009-0217). It will be incorporated into an upcoming Working Draft for the XML Signature 1.1 specification. For information about affected implementations, see CERT Vulnerability Note 466161. For more information about the issue, see the W3C Q&A blog. Learn more about W3C's Security Activity. (Permalink)

### Relationship Between Mobile Web (MWBP) and Web Content Accessibility (WCAG) Note Published

2009-07-09: The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group and the WAI Education and Outreach Working Group have published Relationship between Mobile Web Best Practices (MWBP) and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as a W3C Working Group Note. 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, Shared Web Experiences: Barriers Common to Mobile Device Users and People with Disabilities, 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 (MWI) and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). (Permalink)

### XPath 2.0 and XQuery 1.0 Full Text Facility Test Suite Published

2009-07-09: The XSL and XML Query Working Groups have published version 1.0 of the XPath 2.0 and XQuery 1.0 Full Text Facility Test Suite, and are requesting that people with implementations report results. The Full Text Facility provides a standard way of searching by word or phrase across multilingual documents or data represented using the XPath and XQuery Data Model. As a result of preliminary implementation experience, and to reflect comments received, the Candidate Recommendation for the Full Text Facility has also been republished: the new version incorporates editorial changes but also clarifies some ambiguities that had been reported. The Working Groups hope to move the document to Proposed Recommendation once more test results have been submitted. The XML Query and XSL Working Groups also published today an update of XQuery and XPath Full Text 1.0 Use Cases. Learn more about the XML Activity. (Permalink)

### Last Call: Geolocation API Specification

2009-07-07: 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. (Permalink)

### W3C Launches Device APIs and Policy Working Group

2009-07-03: 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. (Permalink)

### Last Call for Six Rule Interchange Format (RIF) Drafts

2009-07-03: The Rule Interchange Format (RIF) Working Group has published six Last Call Working Drafts. Together, they allow systems using a variety of rule languages and rule-based technologies to interoperate with each other and with other Semantic Web technologies. Three of the drafts define XML formats with formal semantics for storing and transmitting rules:

- The RIF Production Rule Dialect (PRD) is designed for the kinds of rules used in modern Business Rule Management systems.
- The RIF Basic Logic Dialect (BLD) is a foundation for Logic Programming, classical logic, and related formalisms.
- The RIF Core Dialect is the common subset of PRD and BLD, useful when having a ubiquitous platform is paramount.

The other drafts:

- RIF Datatypes and Builtins (DTB) specifies the datatypes and standard operations (modeled on XPath Functions) available in all RIF dialects
- RIF RDF and OWL Compatibility specifies how RIF works with RDF, RDFS, OWL 1, and OWL 2.
- RIF Framework for Logic Dialects (FLD) provides a mechanism for specifying extended dialects, beyond BLD, when more expressive power is required.

The Working Group requests comments be sent to public-rif-comments@w3.org by 31 July 2009. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)

### Live Training Sessions On Mobile Web Design Rescheduled

2009-07-03: Originally scheduled for July, W3C has rescheduled a Live Training Sessions On Mobile Web Design for 13 October 2009. Students will attend a full day of lectures and hands on sessions about the W3C Mobile Web Best Practices standard, and more generally on mobile Web design. Read the full announcement, register, and learn more about the W3C Mobile Web Initiative. (Permalink)

### XHTML 2 Working Group Expected to Stop Work End of 2009, W3C to Increase Resources on HTML 5

2009-07-02: Today the Director announces that when the XHTML 2 Working Group charter expires as scheduled at the end of 2009, the charter will not be renewed. By doing so, and by increasing resources in the HTML Working Group, W3C hopes to accelerate the progress of HTML 5 and clarify W3C's position regarding the future of HTML. A FAQ answers questions about the future of deliverables of the XHTML 2 Working Group, and the status of various discussions related to HTML. Learn more about the HTML Activity. (Permalink)

### Summary of Workshop on Speaker Biometrics and VoiceXML 3.0 Available

2009-07-02: W3C has published a summary and full minutes of the Workshop on Speaker biometrics and VoiceXML 3.0, that took place in Menlo Park, California on 5-6 March. Participants from 15 organizations focused discussion on Speaker Identification and Verification (SIV) functionality within VoiceXML 3.0, and identifying and prioritizing directions for the functionality. The major "takeaways" from the Workshop were confirmation that SIV fits into the VoiceXML space and creation of the "Menlo Park Model", a SIV available VoiceXML architecture. The Working Group will continue to discuss how to include the requirements expressed at the Workshop into VoiceXML 3.0 and improve the specification. Learn more about the Voice Browser Activity. (Permalink)

### First Draft of SPARQL New Features and Rationale

2009-07-02: 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. (Permalink)

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