W3C

The W3C Social Web Working Group is calling for implementations of Webmention, which is now a Candidate Recommendation. Webmention provides a mechanism for a website to notify other websites that it has content which links to them and when the source content changes or is deleted. This mechanism is a core building block for a decentralized (social) Web because it allows sites to automatically learn about connected content without any prior setup or agreement. For users, an immediate benefit is cross-site comments. Before being brought to W3C for standardization, Webmention already had twenty-seven independent implementations in the IndieWebCamp community.

The Data on the Web Best Practices Working Group has published three documents for which reviews are actively sought.

• The Data on the Web Best Practices document offers advice on how data of all kinds – government, research, commercial – can be shared on the Web, whether openly or not. The underlying aim is to make data intelligently available, maximizing the likelihood of its discovery and reuse. The provision of a variety of metadata, the use of URIs as identifiers and multiple access options are key to this. The Working Group believes that the document is now complete and is seeking review before the transition to Candidate Recommendation (call for implementations).

Two new vocabularies accompany the Best Practices document:

• The Dataset Usage Vocabulary offers a framework in which citations, comments, and uses of data within applications can be structured. The aim is to benefit data publishers by enabling assessment of the impact of their efforts to share data, and to benefit data users by encouraging the continued availability of data and the visibility of their own work that uses it.
• The Data Quality Vocabulary is a framework in which the quality of a dataset can be described, whether by the dataset publisher or by a broader community of users. It does not provide a formal, complete definition of quality, rather, it sets out a consistent means by which information can be provided such that a potential user of a dataset can make his/her own judgment about its fitness for purpose.

The vocabularies are seen as mature and the Working Group is seeking one last round of feedback to enable them to be published as Working Group Notes in the near future.

The Web Real-Time Communications Working Group and Device and Sensors Working Group have published a Candidate Recommendation of Media Captures and Streams. This document defines a set of JavaScript APIs that allow local media, including audio and video, to be requested from a platform. It also defines APIs for requesting access to local multimedia devices, such as microphones or video cameras.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of CSS Cascading and Inheritance Level 3. One of the fundamental design principles of CSS is cascading, which allows several style sheets to influence the presentation of a document. When different declarations try to set a value for the same element/property combination, the conflicts must somehow be resolved.

The WAI Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG) has posted the first version of Web Accessibility Perspectives that explores the impact of accessibility for people with disabilities and the benefits for everyone. This resource introduces 10 web accessibility topics with short videos, brief descriptions, and links to learn more. The videos relate the benefits of accessibility to everyone in different situations, and encourage viewers to learn more about web accessibility. Read about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

Interested in learning HMTL5 from the experts? Sign up for W3C’s HTML5 courses! Today, W3Cx re-opens registration for the HTML5 Part 1 MOOC course which focuses on Web design fundamentals at an intermediate level. Taught by Michel Buffa, Professor at the University of Côte d’Azur, the course last 6 weeks. It nicely follows the HTML5 Introduction course that was held last month.

Already followed by over 160K students the world over, this HTML5 Part 1 course allows Web developers and designers to test their new skills through numerous interactive exercises and practical assignments. Read this course’s great reviews, its description and register! Learn lots and have fun!

Tim Berners-Lee, Web Inventor and W3C Director, and Bill McCoy, IDPF Executive Director unveiled plans to explore combining their respective organizations to more quickly advance publishing technologies on the Open Web Platform. The announcement was made Tuesday, 10 May, following Berners-Lee’s keynote address at the IDPF DigiCon Book Expo America 2016 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.

“We share an exciting vision for W3C and IDPF to fully align the publishing industry and core Web technology. This will create a rich media environment for digital publishing that opens up new possibilities for readers, authors, and publishers,” said Berners-Lee.

At a press briefing afterwards, Berners-Lee, Dr. Jeff Jaffe, W3C CEO, George Kerscher, IDPF President, and McCoy answered questions. Additional information is available in the FAQ and joint press release.

The next steps in the process of combining the two organizations include soliciting comments from the respective memberships of W3C and IDPF and drafting a Memorandum of Understanding. Pending support from both memberships, completion of legal review, and the positive resolution of specific details, the goal is to combine the two organizations by January of 2017. The future evolution of EPUB technical standards would continue at W3C, along with broader work to improve publishing features across the entire Open Web Platform.