W3C Standards Make Mobile Web Experience More Inviting

2008-07-29: W3C today announced new standards that will make it easier for people to browse the Web on mobile devices. Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0, published as a W3C Recommendation by the Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group, condenses the experience of many mobile Web stakeholders into practical advice on creating mobile-friendly content. These guidelines will help to improve the experience of people browsing the Web on a wide array of mobile handsets. W3C published a second standard today: XHTML Basic 1.1 Recommendation, the preferred format specification of the Best Practices. With this, there is now a full convergence in mobile markup languages, including those developed by the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA). The Working Group also published today the first draft of a next generation of guidelines, Mobile Web Application Best Practices, aimed at mobile Web applications. Read the press release and testimonials, try the W3C mobileOK checker (beta), and learn more about W3C's Mobile Web Initiative (MWI). (Permalink)

W3C Invites Implementations of CSS Mobile Profile 2.0 (Candidate Recommendation)

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)

Six RIF Working Drafts Published; Last Call for Basic Logic Dialect and RDF-OWL

2008-08-01: The Rule Interchange Format (RIF) Working Group published six documents yesterday:

• RIF Basic Logic Dialect (Last Call)
• RIF RDF and OWL Compatibility (Last Call)
• RIF Framework for Logic Dialects
• RIF Use Cases and Requirements
• RIF Production Rule Dialect (First Public Draft)
• RIF Datatypes and Built-Ins 1.0

"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)

Last Call: Content Transformation Guidelines 1.0

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)

Last Call: CSS Marquee Module Level 3

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)

W3C Talks in August

2008-08-01: Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel. (Permalink)

• 1 August, Tel-Aviv, Israel: Why do we need Internet standards and W3C.Ori Idan presents at August Penguin.
• 16 August, Honolulu, HI, USA: Hot and Spicy Style with CSS.Molly E Holzschlag gives a tutorial at Hot and Spicy Style with CSS.
• 20 August, New York, USA: Multimodal Standards and Applications.Deborah Dahl, Ingmar Kliche, Raj Tumuluri present at SpeechTEK.
• 22 August, Ghent, Belgium: Detailed introduction into RDF and the Semantic Web.Ivan Herman gives a tutorial at 4th Search & Find Workshop.
• View upcoming talks by country
• More talks...

W3C Organizes Workshop on Semantic Web in Energy Industries; Part I to Focus on Oil and Gas

2008-07-31: W3C invites people to participate in a Workshop on Semantic Web in Energy Industries; Part I: Oil & Gas to be hosted by Chevron in Houston, Texas, USA on 9-10 December 2008. Participants will explore how Semantic Web technologies can play a role in the management and analysis of the huge amounts of data gathered from highly diverse sources in this sector of the energy industry. Position papers are due 19 September. W3C invites you to read more about the Workshop goals and learn about the W3C Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)

Stable Version of Compatibility Test for Mobile Browsers Released

2008-07-30: The Mobile Web Test Suites Working Group has released a new and stable version of its Web Compatibility Test for Mobile Browsers, featuring more technologies and several improvements over the previous version. Read more about the design of the test and learn more about the W3C Mobile Web Initiative. (Permalink)

Two Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) Drafts Published: Format 1.0; Evaluation

2008-07-28: The Efficient XML Interchange Working Group published two Working Drafts today: Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) Format 1.0 and Efficient XML Interchange Evaluation. The former specifies the Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) format. EXI is a very compact representation for the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Information Set that is intended to simultaneously optimize performance and the utilization of computational resources. The EXI format uses a hybrid approach drawn from the information and formal language theories, plus practical techniques verified by measurements, for entropy encoding XML information. Using a relatively simple algorithm, which is amenable to fast and compact implementation, and a small set of data types, it reliably produces efficient encodings of XML event streams. The latter document, a first public draft, is an evaluation of the Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) Format 1.0 with reference to the Properties identified by the (now closed) XML Binary Characterization (XBC) Working Group, relative to XML, gzipped XML and ASN.1 PER. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. (Permalink)

Last Call: Web Security Context: User Interface Guidelines

2008-07-24: The Web Security Context Working Group has published the 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 on handling errors in security protocols. The error handling recommendations both minimize the trust decisions left to users, and represent known best practice in inducing users toward safe behavior where they have to make these decisions. Comments are welcome through 15 September. Learn more about the Security Activity. (Permalink)

SOAP over Java Message Service 1.0 First Draft Published

2008-07-24: The SOAP-JMS Binding Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft 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 Java Message Service (JMS). 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. This document specifies bindings for both SOAP 1.1 and SOAP 1.2, using the SOAP 1.2 Protocol Binding Framework. Learn more about the Web Services Activity. (Permalink)

Last Call: CSS Color Module Level 3

2008-07-21: The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published the Last Call Working Draft of CSS Color Module Level 3. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a language for describing the rendering of HTML and XML documents on screen, on paper, in speech, etc. It uses color related properties and respective values to color the text, backgrounds, borders, and other parts of elements in a document. This specification describes color values and properties for foreground color and group opacity. These include properties and values from CSS level 2 and new values. Comments are welcome through 01 September. Learn more about the Style Activity. (Permalink)

XML Entity definitions for Characters Draft Published

2008-07-21: The Math Working Group has published the Working Draft of XML Entity definitions for Characters. Many XML entity names are in common use for mathematical symbols, and this specification aims to provide standard mappings to Unicode for each of these names. Learn more about the Math Activity. (Permalink)

First Drafts of XQuery 1.1 and XQuery 1.1 Use Cases Published

2008-07-15: The XML Query Working Group has published the First Public Working Drafts of XQuery 1.1 and XQuery 1.1 Use Cases. The former describes a query language called XQuery, which is designed to be broadly applicable across many types of XML data sources. This version of XQuery extends the version of the XQuery 1.0 Recommendation published on 23 January 2007; see the list of changes. The latter document describes usage scenarios that will impact the design of XQuery 1.1. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. (Permalink)