W3C

The CSS Working Group has published a Group Note of CSS Snapshot 2017. This document collects together into one definition all the specs that together form the current state of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) as of 2017. The primary audience is CSS implementers, not CSS authors, as this definition includes modules by specification stability, not Web browser adoption rate.

The Web Performance Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Cooperative Scheduling of Background Tasks. This document defines an API that web page authors can use to cooperatively schedule background tasks such that they do not introduce delays to other high priority tasks that share the same event loop, such as input processing, animations and frame compositing. The user agent is in a better position to determine when background tasks can be run without introducing user-perceptible delays or jank in animations and input response, based on its knowledge of currently scheduled tasks, vsync deadlines, user-interaction and so on. Using this API should therefore result in more appropriate scheduling of background tasks during times when the browser would otherwise be idle.

W3C is delighted to publish its Data on the Web Best Practices as a Recommendation. The document offers 35 Best Practices for sharing data, openly or not, in a way that maximizes the potential of the Web as a data platform rather than simply as a way to send data from A to B. The Best Practices are prescriptive in their intended outcomes but not in how those outcomes are achieved. They cover everything from the basics (provide metadata!) through nuance (provide structural metadata), to topics like licensing, provenance and basic information on providing APIs through to more advanced topics like data archiving, data enrichment and republishing data.

The work is complemented by two vocabularies, covering dataset usage and data quality, that were completed last year, and is also the basis of more specialist work in spatial data that is also nearing completion. See the blog for more background.

The Web Application Security Working Group invites implementations of the Candidate Recommendation of Referrer Policy. This specification describes how Web authors can set a referrer policy for documents they create, and describes the impact on the Referer HTTP header for outgoing requests and navigations.

The Web Cryptography Working Group has published a W3C Recommendation of the Web Cryptography API. This specification describes a JavaScript API for performing basic cryptographic operations in web applications, such as hashing, signature generation and verification, and encryption and decryption. Additionally, it describes an API for applications to generate and/or manage the keying material necessary to perform these operations. Uses for this API range from user or service authentication, document or code signing, and the confidentiality and integrity of communications.

The XMLQuery Working Group has published two Group Notes:

• XQuery Update Facility 3.0. This document defines an update facility that extends the XML Query language, XQuery. The XQuery Update Facility 3.0 provides expressions that can be used to make persistent changes to instances of the XQuery and XPath Data Model 3.0.
• XQuery Update Facility 3.0 Requirements and Use Cases: This document specifies goals, requirements and use cases for the XQuery Update Facility 3.0. XQuery 3.0: An XML Query Language provides queries but has no support for adding new values or changing existing values. The XML Query Working Group intends to add support for updates in a future version of XQuery. This document only contains requirements that have not been previously met by XQuery Update Facility 1.0.

The Web Annotation Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation for three documents:

• Web Annotation Data Model: This specification describes a structured model and format, in JSON, to enable annotations to be shared and reused across different hardware and software platforms. Common use cases can be modeled in a manner that is simple and convenient, while at the same time enabling more complex requirements, including linking arbitrary content to a particular data point or to segments of timed multimedia resources.
• Web Annotation Vocabulary specifies the set of RDF classes, predicates and named entities that are used by the Web Annotation Data Model. It also lists recommended terms from other ontologies that are used in the model, and provides the JSON-LD Context and profile definitions needed to use the Web Annotation JSON serialization in a Linked Data context.
• Web Annotation Protocol: This specification describes the transport mechanisms for creating and managing annotations in a method that is consistent with the Web Architecture and REST best practices.

Comments are welcome through 14 February 2017.