This news feed of the W3C Finnish Office lists the 50 newest news items of the current calendar year. The difference with the W3C news feed is that this feed includes also the Finnish-only news, and translates the global news topics to some extent in Finnish. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/ 2012-05-10 The Multimodal Interaction Working Group. has published a Candidate Recommendation of Emotion Markup Language (EmotionML) 1.0. As the web is becoming ubiquitous, interactive, and multimodal, technology needs to deal increasingly with human factors, including emotions. The specification of Emotion Markup Language 1.0 aims to strike a balance between practical applicability and scientific well-foundedness. The language is conceived as a "plug-in" language suitable for use in three different areas: (1) manual annotation of data; (2) automatic recognition of emotion-related states from user behavior; and (3) generation of emotion-related system behavior. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9449 2012-05-10 W3C is pleased to announce that registration is open for a new edition of the W3C online course "Mobile Web 2: Programming Web Applications". Developed by the W3C/MobiWebApp team and taught by Marcos Caceres, this course gives developers all the tools and knowledge necessary to write mobile Web applications that can ship both online and in application stores, using today's advanced technologies. The 6-week course begins 11 June. An early bird rate of 195 Euros is available until 25 May; after that date the full price is 225 Euros so register now. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9448 2012-05-10 The Geolocation Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of Geolocation API Specification. This specification defines an API that provides scripted access to geographical location information associated with the hosting device. Comments are welcome through 10 June. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9450 2012-05-10 Today W3C launched the new Linked Data Platform (LDP) Working Group to promote the use of linked data on the Web. Per its charter, the group will explain how to use a core set of services and technologies to build powerful applications capable of integrating public data, secured enterprise data, and personal data. The platform will be based on proven Web technologies including HTTP for transport, and RDF and other Semantic Web standards for data integration and reuse. The group will produce supporting materials, such as a description of uses cases, a list of requirements, and a test suite and/or validation tools to help ensure interoperability and correct implementation. Learn more about the Semantic Web. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9446 2012-05-09 W3C announced today that eight months after the launch of Community Groups to speed Web innovation, more than 1200 people are participating in 80 groups with wide-ranging interests, including mobile profiles, Web games, and big data. "We wanted to encourage richer and more diverse conversations about Web technology at W3C, and we are off to a great start," said Jeff Jaffe, W3C CEO. "A number of design choices (such as the permissive copyright license) have made this an appealing work environment to important stakeholders. The program is young but promising, and will continue to improve as we learn from our community." http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9445 2012-05-09 The Device APIs Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendations of Battery Status API and Vibration API. The first defines an API that provides information about the battery status of the hosting device. The second defines an API that provides access to the vibration mechanism of the hosting device. W3C publishes a Candidate Recommendation to indicate that the document is believed to be stable and to encourage implementation by the developer community. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9444 2012-05-08 The Web Performance Working Group has published two Last Call Working Drafts: Performance Timeline and User Timing. The first defines an unified interface to store and retrieve performance metric data. The second defines an interface to help web developers measure the performance of their applications by giving them access to high precision timestamps. Comments are welcome through 07 June. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9443 2012-05-08 The RDF Web Applications Working Group has published three Proposed Recommendations for RDFa Core 1.1, RDFa Lite 1.1 and XHTML+RDFa 1.1. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9442 2012-05-08 The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group published Working Drafts of CSS Exclusions and Shapes Module Level 3 and CSS Regions Module Level 3. Exclusions and Shapes lets people define arbitrary areas around which inline content content can flow. CSS Exclusions extend the notion of content wrapping previously limited to floats. The CSS regions module allows content to flow across multiple areas called regions. The regions are not necessarily contiguous in the document order. Learn more about the Style Activity. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9441 2012-05-03 The Provenance Working Group published 5 Working Drafts today related to the PROV data model. Provenance information can be used for many purposes, such as understanding how data was collected so it can be meaningfully used, determining ownership and rights over an object, making judgments about information to determine whether to trust it, verifying that the process and steps used to obtain a result complies with given requirements, and reproducing how something was generated. The PROV model is used to represent provenance records, which contain descriptions of the entities and activities involved in producing and delivering or otherwise influencing a given object. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9440 2012-05-03 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 2012, the nine Advisory Board participants are Ann Bassetti (Boeing), Jim Bell (HP), Michael Champion (Microsoft), Steve Holbrook (IBM), Qiuling Pan (Huawei), Jean-Charles Verdié (MStar Semiconductor), Ora Lassila (Nokia), Charles McCathieNevile (Opera), and Takeshi Natsuno (Keio University). Steve Zilles continues as interim Advisory Board Chair. Read more about the Advisory Board. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9439 2012-05-01 The Web Applications Working Group invites implementation of two Candidate Recommendations: http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9438 2012-05-01 The SPARQL Working Group published three Last Call Working Drafts today: http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9437 2012-05-01 The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Working Draft of CSS Writing Modes Module Level 3. CSS Writing Modes Level 3 defines CSS features to support for various international writing modes, such as left-to-right (e.g. Latin or Indic), right-to-left (e.g. Hebrew or Arabic), bidirectional (e.g. mixed Latin and Arabic) and vertical (e.g. Asian scripts). Learn more about the Style Activity. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9436 2012-05-01 The Internationalization Core Working Group has published a Working Draft of Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0: Normalization. This Architectural Specification provides authors of specifications, software developers, and content developers with a common reference on the use of normalization of text and string identity matching on the Web. The goal of this specification is to improve interoperable text manipulation on the World Wide Web. Learn more about the Internationalization Activity. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9435 2012-05-01 W3C announces today a Workshop on Web-Based Signage, 14-15 June in Tokyo (Chiba), Japan, and hosted by NTT. W3C is organizing a workshop to share perspectives, business use cases, and technology requirements so that the Open Web Platform can be used on large digital displays (such as those found in city squares and at sporting events). We invite operators of consumer electronics companies, digital signage platforms, advertisers, browser vendors, sign owners, and others to participate in this discussion. W3C membership is not required to participate in this workshop. Please submit a statement of interest by 16 May and learn more about participation. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9432 2012-04-26 The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of Media Queries. HTML and CSS support media-dependent style sheets tailored for different media types. For example, a document may use sans-serif fonts when displayed on a screen and serif fonts when printed. Media queries extend the functionality of media types by allowing more precise labeling of style sheets. Please see the Working Group's implementation report and the Media Queries Test Suite. Comments on the Proposed Recommendation are welcome through 23 May. Learn more about the Style Activity. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9430 2012-04-26 The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Server-Sent Events. This specification defines an API for opening an HTTP connection for receiving push notifications from a server in the form of DOM events. The API is designed such that it can be extended to work with other push notification schemes such as Push SMS. Comments are welcome through 17 May. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9429 2012-04-26 Get started in developing Web sites that work well on mobile devices by registering to W3C's "Mobile Web 1: Best Practices" online training course! The now 6-week long course starts Monday, 30 April. Read the course description and register before April 25 and save 30 Euros! http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9427 2012-04-23 Developers and designers are excited by the ability to use the graphical features of all modern browsers - Canvas, SVG, CSS, WebGL, and HTML5 video and audio. W3C is proud to support The Graphical Web 2012, which is both the first in a new international conference series on Open Web Graphics and the 10th conference on Scalable Vector Graphics, 11-14 September 2012. This year, the conference returns to Switzerland and the site of the first SVG Open. ETH Zürich will be hosting the conference at its Hönggerberg campus. Members of the W3C SVG Working Group, including W3C Team members Chris Lilley and Doug Schepers, will be attending the conference. The SVG Working Group will also brief attendees on recent developments around the SVG specification, including SVG2 and integration with CSS3 and HTML5. The conference includes a day of instructional courses. The deadline for presentation abstracts and course outlines is 7 May. Learn more about the W3C Graphics Activity. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9426 2012-04-20 The Web Applications Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Web IDL. This document defines an interface definition language, Web IDL, that can be used to describe interfaces that are intended to be implemented in web browsers. Web IDL is an IDL variant with a number of features that allow the behavior of common script objects in the web platform to be specified more readily. How interfaces described with Web IDL correspond to constructs within ECMAScript execution environments is also detailed in this document. It is expected that this document acts as a guide to implementors of already-published specifications, and that newly published specifications reference this document to ensure conforming implementations of interfaces are interoperable. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9425 2012-04-19 The W3C Decisions and Decision-Making Incubator Group has published their final report. The mission of the Decisions and Decision-Making Incubator Group, part of the Incubator Activity, was to determine the requirements, use cases, and a representation of decisions and decision-making in a collaborative and networked environment suitable for leading to a potential standard for decision exchange, shared situational awareness, and measurement of the speed, effectiveness, and human factors of decision-making. The Incubator Group explored the question over the last year, including use cases, requirements and formats for representing decisions in a machine-understandable format. A standardized decision format would allow the decisions that occur everyday to be managed, archived, shared, and tracked. Two key benefits include the ability to expand and advance the meaningful use of web linked data, as well as the ability to tie-in domain knowledge to provide decision context. The final report captures the major accomplishments and results of the incubator group and ends with a recommendation to transition into a W3C Working Group for the establishment of a Decision Markup Language (DecisionML). http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9421 2012-04-17 The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of CSS Backgrounds and Borders Module Level 3. CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, in speech, etc. This draft contains the features of CSS level 3 relating to borders and backgrounds. It includes and extends the functionality of CSS level 2, which builds on CSS level 1. The main extensions compared to level 2 are borders consisting of images, boxes with multiple backgrounds, boxes with rounded corners and boxes with shadows. Learn more about the Style Activity. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9423 2012-04-17 The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of CSS Image Values and Replaced Content Module Level 3. CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, in speech, etc. This module contains the features of CSS level 3 relating to the <image> type and replaced elements. It includes and extends the functionality of CSS level 2, which builds on CSS level 1. The main extensions compared to level 2 are the generalization of the <url> type to the <image> type, several additions to the ‘<image>’ type, a generic sizing algorithm for images and other replaced content in CSS, and several properties controlling the interaction of replaced elements and CSS's layout models. Learn more about the Style Activity. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9422 2012-04-17 The Web Applications Working Group has published two Working Draft today: http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9420 2012-04-17 W3C is pleased to announce that registration is now open for the next edition of the most popular W3C online training course, Mobile Web 1: Best Practices. The 6-week course begins 30 April 2012. It will help Web designers and content producers who are already familiar with the desktop world to become familiar with the Web as delivered on mobile devices. It is based entirely on W3C standards, particularly the Mobile Web Best Practices. Along with the course description, read comments from past students and what they have achieved. An early bird rate of €195 is available until 23 April 2012; after that date the full price is €225 so register now. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9419 2012-04-10 W3C announces today a Workshop on Linked Open Data and Multi­lingual­Web-LT Requirements, 11-13 June in Dublin, Ireland. Organized by the MultilingualWeb-LT Working Group, the purpose of this workshop is two-fold: first, to discuss the intersection between Linked Open Data and Multilingual Technologies, and second, to discuss Requirements of the W3C MultilingualWeb-LT Working Group. Participation is free. We welcome participation from both speakers and non-speaking attendees. However, whereas future MultilingualWeb workshops will continue the wide-ranging format of previous MultilingualWeb events, and will aim again at a larger audience, attendees for this workshop are required to participate actively in discussions and will need to submit a position statement for the workshop registration. There are limited spaces available. Learn more about Internationalization at W3C. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9418 2012-04-10 The Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group has published an updated Last Call Working Draft of Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) 2.0 and a Working Draft of Implementing ATAG 2.0. ATAG defines how authoring tools should help developers produce accessible web content that conforms to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. It also defines how to make authoring tools accessible so that people with disabilities can use them. Comment deadline is 5 June 2012. Learn more in ATAG 2.0 Last Call Working Draft published and read about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9416 2012-04-10 The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of CSS Variables Module Level 1. CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, in speech, etc. This module contains the features of CSS level 3 relating to variables. It includes and extends the functionality of CSS level 2, which builds on CSS level 1. The main extensions compared to level 2 are the introduction of the variable as a new primitive value type that is accepted by all properties. Learn more about the Style Activity. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9415 2012-04-10 The Efficient XML Interchange Working Group has published a second Public Working Draft of Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) Profile. This document describes a profile of the EXI 1.0 specification for devices with limited memory capacities. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9414 2012-04-10 The Research and Development Working Group (RDWG) will hold an online symposium to explore mobile accessibility challenges, existing resources, and areas for future research and development. The Call for Papers is open until 7 May 2012. Learn more about the Symposium on Mobile Accessibility and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9413 2012-04-05 The XML Schema Working Group has published W3C XML Schema Definition Language (XSD) 1.1 Part 1: Structures and Part 2: Datatypes as W3C Recommendations. The W3C XML Schema Recommendation specifies an XML language for describing the structure and constraining the content of XML documents. It provides both structures and data types, as well as facilities for people and specifications to define their own structures and data types, whether for validation, data binding, documentation or other purposes. Learn more about the XML Activity. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9412 2012-04-05 The Government Linked Data Working Group has published four First Public Working Drafts today: http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9411 2012-04-05 The Web Applications Working Group has published a Working Draft of DOM4. DOM4 defines the event and document model the Web platform uses. The DOM is a language- and platform neutral interface that allows programs and scripts to dynamically access and update the content and structure of documents. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9410 2012-04-05 W3C launched today a new Web Cryptography Working Group, whose mission is to define an API that lets developers implement secure application protocols on the level of Web applications, including message confidentiality and authentication services, by exposing trusted cryptographic primitives from the browser. Web application developers will no longer have to create their own or use untrusted third-party libraries for cryptographic primitives. This will improve security on the Web. Some of the chartered use cases for this API include: http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9409 2012-04-04 The Web Application Security Working Group has published a Working Draft of Cross-Origin Resource Sharing. This document, produced jointly with the Web Applications Working Group, defines a mechanism to enable client-side cross-origin requests. Specifications that enable an API to make cross-origin requests to resources can use the algorithms defined by this specification. If such an API is used on http://example.org resources, a resource on http://hello-world.example can opt in using the mechanism described by this specification (e.g., specifying Access-Control-Allow-Origin: http://example.org as response header), which would allow that resource to be fetched cross-origin from http://example.org. Comments are welcome through 1 May 2012. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9408 2012-04-03 The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published three Working Drafts today. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9407 2012-04-03 Participants in the Japanese Layout Task Force (with input from four W3C Working Groups, CSS, Internationalization Core, SVG and XSL Working Groups) published a second version of a Group Note: Requirements of Japanese Text Layout. This document describes requirements for general Japanese layout realized with technologies like CSS, SVG and XSL-FO. The document is mainly based on a standard for Japanese layout, JIS X 4051, however, it also addresses areas which are not covered by JIS X 4051. This second version of the document contains a significant amount of additional information related to hanmen design, such as handling headings, placement of illustrations and tables, handling of notes and reference marks, etc. A Japanese version is also available. Learn more about W3C's Internationalization Activity. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9406 2012-04-03 The HTML Working Group has published ten updated working drafts: http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9404 2012-03-29 The SYMM Working Group has published a Group Note of SMIL Timesheets 1.0. This document defines an XML timing language that makes SMIL 3.0 element and attribute timing control available to a wide range of other XML languages. This language allows SMIL timing to be integrated into a wide variety of a-temporal languages, even when several such languages are combined in a compound document. Because of its similarity with external style and positioning descriptions in the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) language, this functionality has been termed SMIL Timesheets. Learn more about the W3C Synchronized Multimedia Activity. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9403 2012-03-29 W3C invites developers, business, government, media, analysts, and all who attend the 2012 World Wide Web Conference to participate in the expanding W3C Track and learn how the Open Web Platform is transforming industry and society. W3C's activities at the conference this year, from 16-20 April at the Lyon Convention Center in France, include: http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9401 2012-03-27 The First Public Working Draft of Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Methodology (WCAG-EM) was published today by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (WCAG WG) and Evaluation and Repair Tools Working Group (ERT WG), through the joint WCAG 2.0 Evaluation Methodology Task Force (Eval TF). WCAG-EM provides an approach for evaluating how websites - including web applications and websites for mobile devices - conform to WCAG 2.0. Learn more about WCAG-EM Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Methodology Draft Published and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9400 2012-03-27 The XML Query Working Group has published three Working Drafts today. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9399 2012-03-27 The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Widget Updates. This specification defines a process and a document format to allow a user agent to update an installed widget package with a different version of a widget package. A widget cannot automatically update itself; instead, a widget relies on the user agent to manage the update process. Comments are welcome through 19 April. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9396 2012-03-22 The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published two Working Drafts: http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9395 2012-03-22 The Device APIs Working Group has published a Group Note of The Media Capture API. This specification defined an Application Programming Interface (API) that provided access to the audio, image and video capture capabilities of the device. Development on it has stopped, and further work is taking place as part of “getusermedia: Getting access to local devices that can generate multimedia streams”. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9394 2012-03-22 The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of CSS Speech Module. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a language that describes the rendering of markup documents (e.g. HTML, XML) on various supports, such as screen, paper, speech, etc. The Speech module defines aural CSS properties that enable authors to declaratively control the rendering of documents via speech synthesis, and using optional audio cues. Note that this standard was developed in cooperation with the Voice Browser Activity. Learn more about the Style Activity. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9392 2012-03-20 The Media Fragments Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of Media Fragments URI 1.0 (basic). This document describes the Media Fragments 1.0 (basic) specification. It specifies the syntax for constructing media fragment URIs and explains how to handle them when used over the HTTP protocol. The syntax is based on the specification of particular name-value pairs that can be used in URI fragment and URI query requests to restrict a media resource to a certain fragment. The Media Fragment WG has no authority to update registries of all targeted media types. We recommend media type owners to harmonize their existing schemes with the ones proposed in this document and update or add the fragment semantics specification to their media type registration. Comments are welcome through 26 April. Learn more about the Video in the Web Activity. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9391 2012-03-15 The Audio Working Group has published a Working Draft of Web Audio API. This specification describes a high-level JavaScript API for processing and synthesizing audio in web applications. The primary paradigm is of an audio routing graph, where a number of AudioNode objects are connected together to define the overall audio rendering. The actual processing will primarily take place in the underlying implementation (typically optimized Assembly / C / C++ code), but direct JavaScript processing and synthesis is also supported. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. http://www.w3c.tut.fi/news/news2012.html#entry-9390 2012-03-15