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2008-06-03: W3C launches today a new forum for governments, citizens, researchers, and other stakeholders to investigate how best to use Web technology for good governance and citizen participation. "Open Standards, and in particular Semantic Web Standards, can help lower the cost of government, make it easier for independent agencies to work together, and increase flexibility in the face of change," said Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director. W3C invites participation in the new eGovernment Interest Group, which is open to the public. The group will identify best practices and guidelines in this area, document where current technology does not adequately address stakeholder needs, and suggest improvements via the standards process. Read the W3C eGovernment FAQ and press release, and learn more about the W3C eGovernment Activity. (Permalink)
2008-06-05: The Semantic Web Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group has published two Group Notes: A Prototype Knowledge Base for the Life Sciences and Experiences with the conversion of SenseLab databases to RDF/OWL. The former describes a prototype of a biomedical knowledge base that integrates 15 distinct data sources using currently available Semantic Web technologies including RDF and OWL. The Note outlines which resources were integrated, how the knowledge base was constructed using free and open source triple store technology, how it can be queried using SPARQL, and what resources and inferences are involved in answering complex queries. While the utility of the knowledge base is illustrated by identifying a set of genes involved in Alzheimer's Disease, the approach described here can be applied to any use case that integrates data from multiple domains. The second document describe the experience of converting SenseLab databases into OWL, an important step towards realizing the benefits of Semantic Web in integrative neuroscience research. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)
2008-06-03: The HTML Working Group has published the Offline Web Applications Group Note. HTML 5 contains several features that address the challenge of building Web applications that work while offline. This document highlights these features (SQL, offline application caching APIs as well as online/offline events, status, and the localStorage API) from HTML 5 and provides brief tutorials on how these features might be used to create Web applications that work offline. Learn more about the HTML Activity. (Permalink)
2008-06-02: The W3C Advisory Committee has filled six open seats on the W3C Advisory Board. Created in 1998, the Advisory Board provides guidance to the Team on issues of strategy, management, legal matters, process, and conflict resolution. Beginning 1 July, the nine Advisory Board participants are Jean-François Abramatic (ILOG), Ann Bassetti (The Boeing Company), Jim Bell (HP), Don Deutsch (Oracle), Eduardo Gutentag (Sun Microsystems), Steve Holbrook (IBM), Ken Laskey (MITRE), Ora Lassila (Nokia), and Arun Ranganathan (Mozilla Foundation). Steve Zilles continues as interim Advisory Board Chair. Read more about the Advisory Board. (Permalink)
2008-06-02: Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel. (Permalink)
2008-05-27: As part of the growing set of W3C initiatives related to social development, W3C invites participation in the new Mobile Web for Development (MW4D) interest Group, chartered to explore the potential of mobile technology to help bridge the digital divide. "We need to solve important challenges, such as lack of standards in end-user devices, network constraints, service cost, issues of literacy, and an understanding of the real information needs of rural communities," said Ken Banks, kiwanja.net, who Chairs the group. "To do so requires an multidisciplinary approach, a step we take through the creation of this new group." Read more in the press release. This launch is part of W3C's Mobile Web Initiative (MWI), which aims to identify and resolve challenges and issues of accessing the Web when on the move. This work takes place under the auspices of the European Union's 7th Research Framework Programme (FP7), part of the Digital World Forum project. (Photo credit: Stéphane Boyera. Permalink)
2008-05-26: The XHTML 2 Working Group has published the Last Call Working Draft of XHTML Access Module. This document is intended to help make XHTML-family markup languages more effective at supporting the needs of the accessibility community. It does so by providing a generic mechanism for defining the relationship between document components and well-known accessibility taxonomies. Comments are welcome through 16 June. Learn more about the HTML Activity. (Permalink)
2008-05-23: The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published the Candidate Recommendation of CSS Namespaces Module. This CSS Namespaces module defines the syntax for using namespaces in CSS. It defines the @namespace rule for declaring the default namespace and binding namespaces to namespace prefixes, and it also defines a syntax that other specifications can adopt for using those prefixes in namespace-qualified names. Learn more about the Style Activity. (Permalink)
2008-05-22: The Web API Working Group has published a Working Draft of Progress Events 1.0.This document describes event types that can be used for monitoring the progress of an operation. It is primarily intended for contexts such as data transfer operations specified by XMLHTTPRequest, or Media Access Events. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. (Permalink)
2008-05-21: W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the XML Security Working Group, whose mission is to evaluate and act on recommendations from the September 2007 Workshop on XML Signature and XML Encryption regarding next steps for XML Security specifications. The group's deliverables include new work on XML Signature Syntax and Processing and XML Encryption Syntax and Processing, as well as maintenance of related specifications. Frederick Hirsch (Nokia) will Chair the group, with Thomas Roessler (W3C) as Team Contact. Learn more about the W3C Security Activity. (Permalink)
2008-05-16: The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published the Last Call Working Draft of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Snapshot 2007. This document collects together into one definition all the specifications that together form the current state of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). The primary audience is CSS implementors, not CSS authors, as this definition includes modules by specification stability, not Web browser adoption rate. Comments are welcome through 09 June. Learn more about the Style Activity. (Permalink)
2008-05-16: The W3C XML Query Working Group and the W3C XSL Working Group jointly published today a Candidate Recommendation of XQuery and XPath Full Text 1.0. This document defines the syntax and formal semantics of XQuery and XPath Full Text 1.0 which is a language that extends XQuery 1.0 [XQuery 1.0: An XML Query Language] and XPath 2.0 [XML Path Language (XPath) 2.0] with full-text search capabilities. Implementors are encouraged to run the groups' test suite and report their results. The Groups also published Working Drafts of XQuery and XPath Full Text 1.0 Requirements and Use Cases. Learn more about the XML Activity. (Permalink)
2008-05-16: The Voice Browser Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of State Chart XML (SCXML): State Machine Notation for Control Abstraction. SCXML is an execution environment based on UML Harel State Tables and CCXML. The main differences from the previous draft are (1) the modularization of the language, (2) the introduction of profiles and (3) a revision of the algorithm for document interpretation; the document as a whole has changed significantly and the group welcomes review. Learn more about the Voice Browser Activity. (Permalink)
2008-05-14: The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Education and Outreach Working Group Working Group (EOWG) has published Web Accessibility for Older Users: A Literature Review as a First Public Working Draft. The document includes reviews and analysis of guidelines and articles covering the requirements of people with Web accessibility needs related to ageing. This literature review will inform WAI efforts to promote accessibility solutions for older Web users and potentially to develop profiles or extensions to WAI guidelines. The literature review is a deliverable of the WAI-AGE Project (Ageing Education and Harmonisation). See the call for review and participation for an introduction to the project and an invitation to contribute to the literature review and other WAI-AGE work; and about the Web Accessibility Initiative. (Permalink)
2008-05-08: The XHTML2 Working Group has published the Last Call Working Draft of CURIE Syntax 1.0, which outlines a syntax for expressing URIs in a generic, abbreviated syntax ("Compact URI"). The specification targets language designers who need a mechanism to permit the use of extensible value collections. Any language designer considering the use of QNames in attribute values should consider instead using CURIEs, since CURIEs are designed for this purpose, while QNames are not. Comments are welcome through 10 June. Learn more about the HTML Activity. (Permalink)
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