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.
2008-02-12: Ten years ago, on 10 February 1998, W3C published Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation. W3C is marking the ten-year anniversary of XML by celebrating "XML10" and extending thanks to the dedicated communities -- including people who have participated in W3C's XML groups and mailing lists, the SGML community, and xml-dev -- whose efforts have created a successful family of technologies based on the solid XML 1.0 foundation. The success of XML is a strong indicator of how dedicated individuals, working within the W3C Process, can engage with a larger community to produce industry-changing results. "Today we celebrate the success of open standards in preserving Web data from proprietary ownership," said Jon Bosak, who led the W3C Working Group that produced XML 1.0. Read the press release and testimonials. Send W3C a greeting and learn more about XML at W3C. (Permalink)
2008-02-13: The Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Working Group has published a Group Note of Best Practices for XML Internationalization. This document provides a set of guidelines for developing XML documents and schemas that are internationalized properly. Following the best practices describes here allow both the developer of XML applications, as well as the author of XML content to create material in different languages. Learn more about the Internationalization Activity. (Permalink)
2008-02-08: W3C invites Web content authors to run the
beta release of the W3C mobileOK
checker and make their content work on a broad range of mobile devices.
This new version provides more accurate results and a more reliable
experience. Visitors of the Mobile World Congress (in
Barcelona, starting Monday, 11 February) are welcome to stop by the W3C Mobile Web Initiative
booth (in Hall 7) to learn more about this tool for making Web sites
mobile-friendly. (Permalink)
2008-02-06: The XML Core Working Group has published the Proposed Edited Recommendation of Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fifth Edition). This revision of XML 1.0 incorporates all known errata for XML 1.0 Fourth Edition; see the diff-marked specification for changes. This version of the XML 1.0 specification contains one major change, to the definition of names, bringing one major benefit of XML 1.1 into XML 1.0; please read the background for this change as part of any review. Comments are welcome through 16 May. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. (Permalink)
2008-02-04: The Protocols and Formats Working Group published First Public Working Drafts of:
WAI-ARIA defines a way to make Web content and Web applications more accessible to people with disabilities. It especially helps with dynamic content and advanced user interface controls developed with Ajax, HTML, JavaScript, and related technologies. An updated WAI-ARIA Roadmap was also published.
Additionally, the Education and Outreach Working Group published a new WAI-ARIA FAQ and updated WAI-ARIA Overview. Read the Call for Review: New WAI-ARIA Documents announcement and about the Web Accessibility Initiative. (Permalink)
2008-02-01: Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel. (Permalink)
2008-01-31: W3C has published a Workshop Report: eGovernment and the Web Workshop: "Toward
More Transparent Government". Participants discussed ways to facilitate
the deployment of Web standards across government sites and how to shape
the ongoing research agenda in the development of Web technology and public
policy in order to realize the potential of the Web for access to and use
of government information. Held 18-19 June (press release), in Washington D.C.,
USA, the Workshop was jointly
organized by W3C and WSRI. Learn more about
eGovernment at W3C. (Permalink)
2008-01-29: The XML Core Working Group has published the Proposed
Recommendation of Canonical XML
1.1. The specification establishes a method for determining whether two
documents are identical, or whether an application has not changed a
document, except for transformations permitted by XML 1.0 and Namespaces in
XML. Canonical XML 1.1 is a revision to Canonical XML 1.0 designed to
address issues related to inheritance of attributes in the XML namespace
when canonicalizing document subsets, including the requirement not to
inherit xml:id, and to treat xml:base URI path
processing properly. Comments are welcome through 07 March. Learn more
about W3C's XML Activity. (Permalink)
2008-01-29: The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group has published the Working Draft of Best Practice Recipes for Publishing RDF Vocabularies. This document describes best practice recipes for publishing vocabularies or ontologies on the Web (in RDF Schema or OWL). Each recipe introduces general principles and an example configuration for use with an Apache HTTP server (which may be adapted to other environments). The recipes are all designed to be consistent with the architecture of the Web as currently specified. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)
2008-01-25: The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System Reference. This document defines the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS), a common data model for sharing and linking knowledge organization systems via the Semantic Web. SKOS provides a standard, low-cost means to descr