W3C announces organization of a Workshop on Privacy and Data Usage Control, to take place in Cambridge, MA, UA on 4-5 October 2010. Users trust enormous amounts of personal information to a large variety of online services including social network…

The WebFonts Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of WOFF File Format 1.0. This document specifies the WOFF font format. This format was designed to provide lightweight, easy-to-implement compression of the font data, suitable for use in…

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a 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…

The Web Applications Working Group has published a Working Draft of Cross-Origin Resource Sharing. User agents commonly apply same-origin restrictions to network requests. These restrictions prevent a client-side Web application running from one origin from obtaining data retrieved from another…

W3C is pleased to announce the release of Unicorn, a one-stop tool to help people improve the quality of their Web pages. Unicorn combines a number of popular tools in a single, easy interface, including the Markup validator, CSS validator,…

Our approach with WordPress has always been to make it run on common server configurations. We want users to have flexibility when choosing a host for their precious content. Because of this strategy, WordPress runs pretty much anywhere. Web hosting platforms, however, change over time, and we occasionally are able to reevaluate some of the [...]

W3C is organizing a Workshop: The Multilingual Web – Where Are We?, to take place 26-27 October 2010 in Madrid, Spain. Workshop participants will survey and introduce currently available best practices and standards that help content creators, localizers, language…

The Device APIs and Policy Working Group has published a Working Draft of HTML Media Capture. This specification defines HTML form enhancements that provide access to the audio, image and video capture capabilities of the device. The title of the…

The Web Services Resource Access Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Web Services SOAP Assertions (WS-SOAPAssertions). This specification defines two WS-Policy assertions that can be used to advertise the requirement to use a certain version of…

The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Mobile Web Application Best Practices. The goal of this document is to aid the development of rich and dynamic mobile Web applications. It collects the…

The last week of June, participants at the W3C RDF Next Steps Workshop concluded that support for JSON, Turtle, and for "Named Graphs" are top priorities for any future work on RDF. Participants also highlighted the importance of compatibility with…

The Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group has published Last Call Working Drafts of Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) 2.0 and the companion document Implementing ATAG 2.0. ATAG defines how authoring tools should help developers produce accessible web content that…

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group today requests review of draft updates to Notes that accompany WCAG 2.0: Techniques for WCAG 2.0 (Editors’ Draft) and Understanding WCAG 2.0 (Editors’ Draft). Comments are welcome through 9 August 2010. (This is…

WordPress 3.0 Thelonious passed 3 million downloads yesterday, and today the plugin directory followed suit with a milestone of its own: 100 million downloads. The WordPress community’s growth over the years has been tremendous, and we want to reinvest in it. So we’re taking the next two months to concentrate on improving WordPress.org. A major [...]

The Device APIs and Policy Working Group has published a Working Draft of Contacts API. This document defines the high-level interfaces required to provide access to a user’s unified address book, which may source address book data from several sources,…

It’s been summer for about a week now. Whether you’re on vacation or burning the midnight oil, attending a local/nearby WordCamp is a great way to spend a weekend. Meet other WordPress users, developers, designers & consultants, learn a little something, maybe share a little of your own experience and knowledge, and break bread (or [...]

The Device APIs and Policy Working Group has published two Group Notes: Device API Access Control Requirements and Device API Privacy Requirements. The former defines requirements for controlling access to device APIs, illustrated by corresponding use cases. The latter provides…

The HTML Working Group published eight documents: Updated Working Drafts of the HTML5 specification, the accompanying explanatory document HTML5 differences from HTML4, and the related non-normative reference HTML: The Markup Language. Updated Working Drafts of the specifications HTML+RDFa 1.1 and…

The Media Fragments Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Media Fragments URI 1.0. This document describes the Media Fragments 1.0 specification. It specifies the syntax for constructing media fragment URIs and explains how to handle them…

The Web Security Context Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation 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…

Today W3C published a new standard for building rule systems on the Web. Declarative rules allow integration and transformation of data from multiple sources in a distributed, transparent and scalable manner. The new standard, called Rule Interchange Format (RIF), was…

The Web Applications Working Group invites implementation of two Candidate Recommendations: Digital Signatures for Widgets and The ‘view-mode’ Media Feature. The first defines a profile of the XML Signature Syntax and Processing 1.1 specification to allow a widget package to…

The SVG Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 (Second Edition). This specification defines the features and syntax for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Version 1.1, a modularized language for describing two-dimensional vector…

The User Agent Accessibility Guidelines Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) 2.0. UAAG defines how browsers, media players, and other "user agents" should support accessibility for people with disabilities and work…

The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Guidelines for Web Content Transformation Proxies 1.0. This document provides guidance to Content Transformation proxies as to whether and how to transform Web content. Content Transformation…

The Voice Browser Working Group has published a Working Draft of Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) 3.0. This document specifies VoiceXML 3.0, a modular XML language for creating interactive media dialogs that feature synthesized speech, recognition of spoken and DTMF…

Arm your vuvuzelas: WordPress 3.0, the thirteenth major release of WordPress and the culmination of half a year of work by 218 contributors, is now available for download (or upgrade within your dashboard). Major new features in this release include a sexy new default theme called Twenty Ten. Theme developers have new APIs that allow [...]

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG) today published How to Make Presentations Accessible to All, a page of the training resource suite being updated as part of the WAI-AGE Project. This new WAI resource helps…

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of CSS Backgrounds and Borders Module Level 3. This specification describes styles for borders and backgrounds. It includes and extends the functionality of CSS level 2…

A weekend present, in haiku:
Last call; final bugs
Itch, scratch, contort; calmly wait
For now: RC3
That’s right. What will hopefully be the final release candidate, RC3, is now available for download and testing.
Plugin developers: test your pl…

The XSL Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Requirements and Use Cases for XSLT 2.1. This document is a characterization of requirements and use cases for XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 2.1. The relative priorities to be…

The Math Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 3.0. MathML is an XML application for describing mathematical notation and capturing both its structure and content. The goal of MathML is to…

When I was a kid my dad used to practice his typing skills (on a real typewriter no less) with the phrase: Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. For some reason that has stuck with me all these years. Today I’m going to rephrase and [...]

The RDB2RDF Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Use Cases and Requirements for Mapping Relational Databases to RDF. The need to share data with collaborators motivates custodians and users of relational databases (RDB) to expose relational…

The RDFa Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of the RDFa API. RDFa API provides a mechanism that allows Web-based applications using documents containing RDFa markup to extract and utilize structured data in a way that is…

The Web Services Resource Access Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Web Services SOAP Assertions (WS-SOAPAssertions). This specification defines two WS-Policy assertions that can be used to advertise the requirement to use a certain version of…

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Working Draft of CSS Generated Content for Paged Media Module. This module describes features often used in printed publications. Most of the specified functionality involves some sort of generated content…

The Media Annotations Working Group has published Last Call Working Drafts of Ontology for Media Resource 1.0 and API for Media Resource 1.0. The former document defines the Ontology for Media Resource 1.0. This ontology, or "core vocabulary," is meant…

The SPARQL Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of SPARQL 1.1 Federation Extensions, which defines extensions to the SPARQL Query Language to support distributed SPARQL query execution. The group also published 5 updates, listed below. The…

As Matt teased earlier, the first release candidate (RC1) for WordPress 3.0 is now available. What’s an RC? An RC comes after beta and before the final launch. It means we think we’ve got everything done: all features finished, all bugs squashed, and all potential issues addressed. But, then, with over 20 million people using [...]

Has it really been seven years since the first release of WordPress? It seems like just yesterday we were fresh to the world, a new entrant to a market everyone said was already saturated. (As a side note, if the common perception is that a market is finished and that everything interesting has been done [...]

The Multimodal Interaction Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Ink Markup Language (InkML). The Ink Markup Language serves as the data format for representing ink entered with an electronic pen or stylus. The markup allows for…

W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the Library Linked Data Incubator Group, whose mission is to help increase global interoperability of library data on the Web, by bringing together people involved in Semantic Web activities – focusing…

The XML Processing Model Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of XML processor profiles. This specification defines several XML processor profiles, each of which fully determines a data model for any given XML document. It is intended…

The XML Security Working Group has published three Last Call Working Drafts: XML Encryption Syntax and Processing Version 1.1, XML Signature Syntax and Processing Version 1.1, and XML Security Generic Hybrid Ciphers. The group also published a Working Draft of…

The Voice Browser Working Group has published a Working Draft of State Chart XML (SCXML): State Machine Notation for Control Abstraction. SCXML is a general-purpose event-based state machine language that can be used in many ways. It can be used…

W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the Audio Incubator Group, whose mission is to explore the possibility of starting one or more specifications dealing with various aspects of advanced audio functionality, including reading and writing raw audio data,…

W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the Audio Incubator Group, whose mission is to explore the possibility of starting one or more specifications dealing with various aspects of advanced audio functionality, including reading and writing raw audio data,…

The XSL Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 2.1. This specification defines the syntax and semantics of XSLT 2.1, a language for transforming XML documents into other XML documents. The main focus…

The Rule Interchange Format (RIF) Working Group has published six Proposed Recommendations. Together, they allow systems using a variety of rule languages and rule-based technologies to interoperate with each other and with Semantic Web technologies. Three of the drafts define…

The Web Applications Working Group has published a second Last Call Working Draft of Digital Signatures for Widgets. This document defines a profile of the XML Signature Syntax and Processing 1.1 specification to allow a widget package to be digitally…

The Web Applications Working Group has published a second Last Call Working Draft of Digital Signatures for Widgets. This document defines a profile of the XML Signature Syntax and Processing 1.1 specification to allow a widget package to be digitally…

Today W3C announced a powerful tool for managing XML-rich processes such as business processes used in enterprise environments. The W3C Recommendation "XProc: An XML Pipeline Language," provides a standard framework for composing XML processes. XProc streamlines the automation, sequencing and…

Today W3C announced a powerful tool for managing XML-rich processes such as business processes used in enterprise environments. The W3C Recommendation “XProc: An XML Pipeline Language,” provides a standard framework for composing XML processes. XProc streamlines the automation, sequencing and…

Following the successful post-WordCamp San Francisco code sprint, we are now ready to release the second beta of WordPress 3.0. Things to test: Revised menu user interface Changes to the WordPress exporter and importer to make it more flexible Already have a test install that you want to switch over to the beta? Try the [...]

The Model-Based User Interfaces Incubator Group (MBUI-XG) published their final report today. During the last year the MBUI-XG has evaluated research on MBUIs, including end-to-end models that extend beyond a single Web page, and has assessed its potential as a…

The XML Core Working Group has published a W3C Recommendation of XML Linking Language (XLink) Version 1.1. This specification defines the XML Linking Language (XLink) Version 1.1, which allows elements to be inserted into XML documents in order to create…

W3C is pleased to announce that, thanks to community contributions to the W3C Validator Campaign, Thomas Gambet will spend the next year at W3C turning the Unicorn project into a production service. The Unicorn Project aims to provide the big…

As part of its efforts to ensure that core Web standards meet global needs, W3C announces today the opening of a new Office in India. The Office is hosted in New Delhi by the Technology Development for Indian Languages…

The W3C Advisory Committee has filled five 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 2010,…

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Working Draft of CSS Template Layout Module. This specification is part of level 3 of CSS and contains features to describe layouts at a high level, meant for tasks such…

The broad availability of possibly sensitive data collected through location sensors and other facilities in a Web browser illustrates the broad new privacy challenges Web users face today. For example, new APIs in Web browsers running on a mobile device…

W3C announced today a Workshop on Augmented Reality on the Web, 15-16 June 2010 in Barcelona (Spain). Augmented reality (AR) is a long standing topic in its own right but it has not been developed on the Web platform. As…

A week from today on May 1, hundreds of WordPress users, developers, designers and general enthusiasts will descend upon San Francisco for the 4th annual WordCamp SF. Since that first WordCamp in 2006, back when WordPress was on version 2.0 (Duke), the number of people using WordPress to power their web publishing — from personal [...]

Early next week, we’re hoping to release the 2nd beta release of WordPress 3.0 on our journey toward the final version. There are still over 200 bugs in the 3.0 milestone, and we can use all the help we can get on fixing these problems. If you’re a developer, take a look at the list [...]

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG) has updated the following resources as part of the WAI-AGE Project: Contacting Organizations about Inaccessible Websites provides guidance on encouraging organizations to make their websites accessible, particularly when you…

The RDFa Working Group has published the First Public Working Drafts of RDFa Core 1.1 and XHTML+RDFa 1.1. RDFa Core is a specification for attributes to express structured data in any markup language. XHTML+RDFa 1.1 is an application of RDFa…

On Thursday, April 22, Judy Brewer, Director of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), will be among those testifying at a Hearing on Achieving the Promise of the Americans with Disabilities Act in the Digital Age – Current Issues, Challenges, and…

W3C has updated the popular online training course “Introduction to Mobile Web Best Practices” for 2010. The first run of this updated course begins on Monday, 10 May. Early Bird registration ends this Friday, 23 April! (although full registration remains…

The Web Applications Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Widget Access Request Policy. User agents running widgets are expected to provide access to potentially sensitive APIs (phone book, calendar, file system, etc.) that expose data which should…

The Web Applications Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Widget Access Request Policy. User agents running widgets are expected to provide access to potentially sensitive APIs (phone book, calendar, file system, etc.) that expose data which should…

The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of View Mode Media Feature. Web applications, be they widgets or in-browser, can on most platforms be run in multiple visual modes. At times they may occupy the…

The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of View Mode Media Feature. Web applications, be they widgets or in-browser, can on most platforms be run in multiple visual modes. At times they may occupy the…

W3C invites WWW2010 conference participants to attend two W3C track sessions on April 29 and 30 in Raleigh, North Carolina (USA). Responding to the Web community’s demand for open discussion on the future of HTML5 and Linked Data, W3C…

The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Digital Signatures for Widgets. This document defines a profile of the XML Signature Syntax and Processing 1.1 specification to allow a widget package to be digitally signed….

The XML Core Working Group has published a Group Note of Associating Schemas with XML documents 1.0 (First Edition). There are several document schema definition languages in common use today that can be used to specify one or more validation…

The XHTML2 Working Group has published a Proposed Edited Recommendation of XHTML Modularization 1.1 – Second Edition. This document is the second edition of version 1.1 of XHTML Modularization, an abstract modularization of XHTML and implementations of the abstraction using…

Summary: A web host had a crappy server configuration that allowed people on the same box to read each others’ configuration files, and some members of the “security” press have tried to turn this into a “WordPress vulnerability” story. WordPress, like all other web applications, must store database connection info in clear text. Encrypting credentials [...]

The Web Applications Working Group has published a 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 different version of a widget package….

The Media Fragments Working Group has published a Working Draft of Media Fragments URI 1.0. This specification provides for a media-format independent, standard means of addressing media fragments on the Web using Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI). In the context of…

The deadline for students applying for Google Summer of Code this year is today, at 19:00 UTC. That’s about 3 hours from now. Still working on your application? Double check your time zone here. No late applications will be accepted. There are a lot of potential projects on our Ideas list, so if you’ve been [...]

The XML Query Working Group has published a Working Draft of XQuery Scripting Extension 1.0. This specification defines an extension to XQuery 1.0 and XQuery Update Facility. Expressions can be evaluated in a specific order, with later expressions seeing the…

The Device APIs and Policy Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of File API: Writer. Web applications are currently fairly limited in how they can write to files. One can present a link for download, but creating…

Remember when I posted earlier about the Twitter account, and I said that hopefully you’d find out later today what has been keeping us all so busy? Beta testers, this is your moment: the WordPress 3.0 Beta 1 has arrived!
This is an early beta. This means there are a few things we’re still finishing. We [...]

This post is about the @WordPress Twitter account, so if you don’t use Twitter, or don’t care about Twitter, then feel free to take the time you might have spent reading this post to go play outside (or an equivalent) instead.
Okay, so, Twitter! When all those apps started popping up using the Twitter API, things [...]

The Math Working Group has published a W3C Recommendation of XML Entity Definitions for Characters. Notation and symbols have proved very important for human communication, especially in scientific documents. Mathematics has grown in part because its notation continually changes toward…

The Voice Browser Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Voice Browser Call Control: CCXML Version 1.0. This document describes CCXML, or the Call Control eXtensible Markup Language. CCXML provides declarative markup to describe telephony call control. It…

The Device APIs and Policy Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of The Capture API, which defines an Application Programming Interface (API) that provides access to the audio, image and video capture capabilities of the device. Learn…

W3C has updated the popular online training course Introduction to W3C’s Mobile Web Best Practices for 2010. The first run of this updated course begins on Monday, 10 May. Early Bird registration is now open! Led by members of W3C’s…

The Web Services Resource Access Working Group published six Last Call Working Drafts for Web Services: Enumeration (WS-Enumeration), Event Descriptions (WS-EventDescriptions), Eventing (WS-Eventing), Fragment (WS-Fragment), Metadata Exchange (WS-MetadataExchange), and Transfer (WS-Transfer). Comments welcome through 11 May 2010. Learn more about…

Scene: A college classroom
Professor: So. Out of the 20 students in the class, half wrote WordPress Summer of Code proposals good enough to receive an A. How many of you are planning to apply for the program?
Jack, a student: I am. They opened applications today.
Sophie, a student: I am. And that sentence was grammatically terrible.
Jack: [...]

With SVG support announced for all major browsers, there is an uptake in interest in SVG. W3C joins other sponsors to help with SVG Open 2010, the 8th international conference on Scalable Vector Graphics, to be held in Paris, France…

Scene: A college classroom
Professor: Is anyone here applying for Google Summer of Code this year? If so, see me after class to discuss getting independent study credit toward your degree.
Jack, a student: Isn’t that a really hard program to get into? Like, hard like getting to level 70 in Modern Warfare 2?
Sophie, a student: I [...]

W3C launched today the new WebFonts Working Group, which aims to bring typographic richness on the Web to it’s full potential. Font linking mechanisms are already standardized or in development, so the group will focus on WOFF, an interoperable font…

The XML Security Working Group published four Working Drafts today: XML Encryption Syntax and Processing Version 1.1, which specifies a process for encrypting data and representing the result in XML. XML Security RELAX NG Schemas, which serves to publish RELAX…

This weekend, thousands of WordPress users and developers are among the people attending the South by Southwest (SxSW) Interactive conference in Austin, TX. To celebrate this, we’re throwing a WordPress BBQ at SxSW tomorrow so that there’s a place for us all to get together.
If you’re a WordPress fan attending SxSW (or you just happen [...]

We recommend open source software whenever we can, and the Firefox browser from Mozilla is one of our favorites. Firefox 3.6 recently came out with persona support, allowing users to skin their browsers with favorite designs and brands. WordPress users everywhere seem to love the W symbol (at WordCamps it shows up on everything from [...]

W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the Decisions and Decision-Making Incubator Group, whose mission is to determine the requirements, use cases, and a representation of decisions and decision-making in a collaborative and networked environment suitable for leading to…

The User Agent Accessibility Guidelines Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) 2.0. UAAG defines how browsers, media players, and other “user agents” should support accessibility for people with disabilities and work…

W3C announced today a Workshop on Conversational Applications — Use Cases and Requirements for New Models of Human Language to Support Mobile Conversational Systems, 18-19 June 2010 in Somerset, New Jersey (USA), Hosted by Openstream. There is currently an increasing…

W3C announced today a Workshop on Conversational Applications – Use Cases and Requirements for New Models of Human Language to Support Mobile Conversational Systems, 18-19 June 2010 in Somerset, New Jersey (USA), Hosted by Openstream. There is currently an increasing…

The WebCGM Working Group has published a W3C Recommendation of WebCGM 2.1. Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM) is an ISO standard, defined by ISO/IEC 8632:1999, for the interchange of 2D vector and mixed vector/raster graphics. WebCGM is a profile of CGM,…

The XML Processing Model Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of XProc: An XML Pipeline Language. This specification describes the syntax and semantics of XProc: An XML Pipeline Language, a language for describing operations to be performed on XML…

The Web Security Context Working Group has published a 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…

The Media Annotations Working Group has published Working Drafts of Ontology for Media Resource 1.0 and API for Media Resource 1.0. The former document defines the Ontology for Media Resource 1.0, a core vocabulary to describe media resources on the…

W3C today named Dr. Jeffrey Jaffe its new Chief Executive Officer. “Web technologies continue to be the vehicle for every industry to incorporate the rapid pace of change into their way of doing business,” said Dr. Jaffe. “I’m excited…

W3C published today seven documents related to HTML: HTML 5 and HTML5 differences from HTML4. In addition, some content that was part of the HTML 5 specification has been published in two new standalone drafts: HTML Canvas 2D Context and…

The Voice Browser Working Group has published a Working Draft of Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) 3.0. This document specifies VoiceXML 3.0, a modular XML language for creating interactive media dialogs that feature synthesized speech, recognition of spoken and DTMF…

The XML Security Working Group has published two Working Drafts: XML Signature Syntax and Processing Version 2.0 and Canonical XML Version 2.0. The first specifies XML syntax and processing rules for creating and representing digital signatures. XML Signatures can be…

Back in April of last year, Matt posted here on the dev blog about the release of BuddyPress 1.0, a plugin that adds a social networking layer to an installation of WordPress MU. Many people were excited about the idea, but were unable to experiment with BuddyPress because they ran single installations of WordPress rather [...]

The XML Core Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of XML Linking Language (XLink) Version 1.1. This specification defines the XML Linking Language (XLink) Version 1.1, which allows elements to be inserted into XML documents in order to create…

A Report from the 3.0 Development Cycle
Menus
There’s been a flurry of blog posts about the integration of the WooThemes Custom Navigation into WordPress core, so I thought it was time we posted the official word. For 3.0, the main user-facing feature we wanted to include was a better site menu management system. Currently, dealing with [...]

The Voice Browser Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) Version 1.1. The Speech Synthesis Markup Language Specification is designed to provide a rich, XML-based markup language for assisting the generation of synthetic speech…

The Timed Text Working Group has published an updated Candidate Recommendation of Timed Text Markup Language (TTML) 1.0. TTML is a content type that represents timed text media for the purpose of interchange among authoring systems. Timed text is textual…

The Mobile Web Test Suites Working Group has just released a brand new Web Compatibility Test for Mobile Browsers. Based on the same idea of evaluating support of a number of Web technologies at a glance as in the…

I like to moderate comments when I’m waiting for something: a checkout clerk to help me, the dentist to call me back to the office, a soy chai to be made. I don’t lug my laptop everywhere I go,* so I love it that we have mobile apps that make this possible. I don’t know [...]

Thomas Mackenzie alerted us to a problem where logged in users can peek at trashed posts belonging to other authors. If you have untrusted users signed up on your blog and sensitive posts in the trash, you should upgrade to 2.9.2.  As always, you can visit the Tools->Upgrade menu to upgrade.

W3C announced today a Workshop on Future Standards for Model-Based User Interfaces, 13-14 May 2010 in Rome Italy. Participants will examine the challenges facing Web developers due to variations in device capabilities, modes of interaction and software standards, the need…

During the implementation phase of the Rule Interchange Format (RIF), the Working Group discovered a problem with the design of the Production Rules Dialect. This problem is addressed with a new Last Call Working Draft that changes the way actions…

The Math Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of XML Entity Definitions for Characters. This document presents a completed listing harmonizing the known uses in math and science of character entity names that appear throughout the XML world and…

The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Mobile Web Application Best Practices. The goal of this document is to aid the development of rich and dynamic mobile Web applications. It collects the most…

The Web Services Resource Access Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Web Services Event Descriptions (WS-EventDescriptions). In the Web Services context, there are many use cases in which it is necessary for an endpoint to advertise…

The XSL Working Group has published a Working Draft of Design Notes for Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) 2.0. This document describes initial design notes for version 2.0 of the Formatting Object (FO) part of the Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL). Learn…

The XML Security Working Group published two Last Call Working Drafts: XML Signature Syntax and Processing 1.1, which specifies XML syntax and processing rules for creating and representing digital signatures. XML Signatures can be applied to any digital content, including…

The XML Security Working Group published two Last Call Working Drafts: XML Signature Syntax and Processing 1.1, which specifies XML syntax and processing rules for creating and representing digital signatures. XML Signatures can be applied to any digital content, including…

W3C launched today the RDFa Working Group, whose mission is to support the use of RDFa, a format for embedding structured data in Web documents. The Working Group’s goals include making it easier to author RDFa, promoting continued adoption of…

The Device APIs and Policy Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of The System Information API. This specification defines an API to provide Web applications with access to various properties of the system which they are running…

The XML Query Working Group and the XSL Working Group have jointly published an update to the Candidate Recommendation of XQuery and XPath Full Text 1.0, and to the companion Use Cases. The former defines the syntax and formal semantics…

The Mobile Web Initiative Test Suites Working Group has published the First Public Working Group Note of A Method for Writing Testable Conformance Requirements. This document presents a method for writing, marking-up, and analyzing conformance requirements in technical specifications that…

W3C has published a report and full minutes of the Workshop on Access Control Application Scenarios, held in Luxembourg in November 2009. Participants from 17 organizations examined the current limitations of access control, privacy enhancement, distributed handling of access control,…

The SPARQL Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of SPARQL 1.1 Property Paths, which defines a more succinct way to write parts of basic graph patterns and also extend matching of triple pattern to arbitrary length paths….

The UK Government has unveiled its open data website, data.gov.uk, developed with the help of Tim Berners-Lee (W3C Director) and John Sheridan (Linked Data Lead for data.gov.uk and co-Chair of the W3C eGovernment Interest Group). Like data.gov in the United…

The Web Applications Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Uniform Messaging Policy, Level One. The Uniform Messaging Policy (UMP) enables cross-site messaging that avoids Cross-Site-Request-Forgery and similar attacks that abuse HTTP cookies and other credentials. For…

It is with extremely great pleasure that I point you to the first post at the new WordPress Foundation site. Not only am I excited about the things that will happen under the auspices of the Foundation, I’m excited to see a site running the 3.0 development version and the nascent theme called 2010. Go [...]

The XML Schema Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of W3C XML Schema Definition Language (XSD): Component Designators. XML Schema: Component Designators defines a scheme for identifying XML Schema components as specified by XML Schema Part 1: Structures…

The Media Annotations Working Group has published a Working Draft of Use Cases and Requirements for Ontology and API for Media Resource 1.0. This document specifies use cases and requirements as an input for the development of the “Ontology for…

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of CSS Styling Attributes Level 1. Markup languages such as HTML and SVG provide a styling attribute on most elements, to hold a fragment of a…

The Device APIs and Policy Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Contacts API. This API provides access to the user’s address book from within a browser environment. Learn more about JavaScript interfaces developed in W3C….

W3C is organizing a Workshop on the Next Steps for RDF around June 2010; we will announce the exact dates and location as soon as possible. Since its publication in 2004, the Resource Description Framework (RDF) has become the core…

The Web Applications Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Selectors API Level 2. Selectors, which are widely used in CSS, are patterns that match against elements in a tree structure. The Selectors API specification defines methods…

The WebCGM Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of WebCGM 2.1. Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM) is an ISO standard, defined by ISO/IEC 8632:1999, for the interchange of 2D vector and mixed vector/raster graphics. WebCGM is a profile of CGM,…

The Web Applications Working Group has published a Working Draft of Programmable HTTP Caching and Serving. This document defines APIs for off-line serving of requests to HTTP resources using static and dynamic responses. It extends the function of application caches…

2010 is the year we dive into open source design. We’ve dipped our toes in this pool before (icon contest, graphic design component for Trac tickets, header refresh contest, etc.), but this year we’re going to cannonball and make a big splash. Here’s what you need to know if you want to get involved.
A list [...]

Correction 13 January 2010 : The W3C Advisory Committee has elected Daniel Appelquist (Vodafone) and Henry Thompson (U. of Edinburgh) to the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG). The Director has appointed Ashok Malhotra (Oracle), Noah Mendelsohn, and Jonathan Rees. This…

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG) today published Contacting Organizations about Inaccessible Websites as part of the WAI-AGE Project. This new WAI resource guides you through telling organizations about accessibility barriers on their website. WAI…

The XML Processing Model Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of XProc: An XML Pipeline Language, a language for describing operations to be performed on XML documents. A pipeline consists of steps. Like pipelines, steps take zero…

The Web Applications Working Group has published a Working Draft of Indexed Database API. User agents need to store large numbers of objects locally in order to satisfy off-line data requirements of Web applications. The Web Storage specification is useful…

After over a million downloads of WordPress 2.9 and lots of feedback from all of you, we’re releasing WordPress  2.9.1.  This release addresses a handful of minor issues as well as a rather annoying problem where scheduled posts and pingbacks are not processed correctly due to incompatibilities with some hosts.  If any of these issues [...]

Rested up from the holidays? I hope so, because the new year has begun and a lot is going to be happening with WordPress in 2010, and you definitely want to be a part of it. Later this week the scope for version 3.0 (featuring the addition of MU functionality to the WordPress codebase) will [...]

Thanks to everyone who tested 2.9.1 Beta 1.  We’re following that up with Release Candidate 1.  RC1 contains a few more fixes, bringing the number of fixed tickets up to 23.  If you are already running Beta 1, visit Tools->Upgrade in your blog’s admin to get RC1.  You can also  download the RC1 package and [...]

Merry Christmas! One of the things that was discussed at the core commit team meetup was release scope (and scope creep). Now that 2.9 is out and it’s time to start thinking about 3.0, we think it would be appropriate to stop and take a breath before diving in, and make a plan in advance. [...]

Unfortunately, the recent 2.9 release triggered a bug in certain versions of PHP’s curl extension.  With these versions of curl, scheduled posts and pingbacks are not processed correctly.  To fix this problem as well as a handful of other, lesser issues, we are quickly releasing 2.9.1, the first maintenance release of the 2.9 line.  Help [...]

The Web Applications Working Group has published updates to seven specifications related to APIs that enhance the open Web platform as a runtime environment for full-featured applications. W3C invites implementation experience for the two newest Candidate Recommendations: The Widget Interface…

The Web Security Context Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation 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…

I want to make you mine, all the time… oh wait. Hello. I’m here on behalf of the entire WordPress development team and community to announce the immediate availability of WordPress version 2.9 “Carmen” named in honor of magical jazz vocalist Carmen McRae (whom we’ve added to our Last.fm WP release station). You can upgrade [...]

After the video from the core team meetup was posted, the topic that seemed to get the most attention on Twitter and various community sites was Matt’s announcement that there would be a new default theme in 2010, so I thought I’d start with that as the first of the meetup summaries.
When Kubrick was bundled [...]

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group invites implementation of two Candidate Recommendations: CSS Backgrounds and Borders Module Level 3 and CSS Multi-column Layout Module. CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and…

The Media Fragments Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Media Fragments URI 1.0. Audio and video resources on the World Wide Web are currently treated as “foreign” objects, which can only be embedded using a plugin…

The Web Services Resource Access Working Group published updates to five Working Drafts: Web Services Enumeration (WS-Enumeration), Web Services Eventing (WS-Eventing), Web Services Resource Transfer (WS-RT), Web Services Transfer (WS-Transfer), and Web Services Metadata Exchange (WS-MetadataExchange). The first describes a…

We’re at that exciting point in WordPress development where the dev team feels like version 2.9 is complete and ready for the world.
If you’ve been waiting for your moment to pitch in, it’s now. First we need tech savvy testers to upgrade their blogs and kick the tires, make sure everything is rolling like you [...]

The Multimodal Interaction Working Group has published a Group Note of Use Cases for Possible Future EMMA Features. Since EMMA 1.0 became a W3C Recommendation, a number of new possible use cases for the EMMA language have emerged, e.g., multimodal…

As part of work on XSLT 2.1 and XQuery 1.1, the XQuery and XSL Working Groups have published First Public Working Drafts of XQuery and XPath Data Model 1.1, XPath and XQuery Functions and Operators 1.1, XSLT and XQuery Serialization…

The W3C China Office supported Webrebuild.org with their first Web Standards Event in Beijing. The theme of the event, attended by over 100 people, was “Thoughts on Web Standards” and it aimed at offering a platform for developers in…

The Protocols and Formats Working Group (PFWG) published an updated Working Draft of WAI-ARIA, the Accessible Rich Internet Applications technical specification for making dynamic, interactive Web content accessible to people with disabilities. PFWG also published Working Drafts of the WAI-ARIA…

The Math Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendations Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 3.0 and A MathML for CSS Profile. The former defines the Mathematical Markup Language, an XML application for describing mathematical notation and capturing both its…

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of Selectors Level 3. Selectors are patterns that match against elements in a tree, and as such form one of several technologies that can be used to select…

To get started, here’s a short video from the meetup discussing some of the topics and 2.9. In the opening pan, you’ll see (L-R) Andrew Ozz, Mark Jaquith, Jane Wells, Peter Westwood, and Ryan Boren, followed by Matt Mullenweg as the first person talking. Tip: go full-screen in HD to feel like you were there.

Last [...]

The WAI Education and Outreach Working Group today published a first collection of statistics, case studies, and articles that support the business case for web accessibility, in Resources for Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your Organization. To learn…

The Internationalization Core Working Group publishes information to help people understand and use international aspects of W3C technologies. Recently the group published Choosing a Language Tag. The appearance of RFC 5646 earlier this year added a new ‘extended language’ subtag…

In a joint press release today, The Internet Society (ISOC) and W3C announced a donation from ISOC for the purpose of advancing the evolution of W3C as an organization that creates open Web standards. “ISOC and W3C have worked together…

The WAI Education and Outreach Working Group today published Involving Users in Web Projects for Better, Easier Accessibility, which provides guidance for project managers, designers, and developers of: websites and web applications browsers, media players, and assistive technologies authoring tools…

The XML Core Working Group has published Namespaces in XML 1.0 (Third Edition) as a W3C Recommendation. XML namespaces provide a simple method for qualifying element and attribute names used in Extensible Markup Language (XML) documents by associating them with…

W3C today outlines a roadmap for extending the Web to rural and underprivileged communities in developing countries. The Mobile Web for Social Development (MW4D) Roadmap examines the challenges to deploying and accessing development-oriented services and surveys the technology landscape for…

The Efficient XML Interchange Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) Format 1.0. This document is the specification of the Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) format, a very compact representation for the Extensible Markup Language…

The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Widget Access Request Policy. This specification defines the security model controlling network access from within a widget, as well as a method for widget authors to request…

There have been a lot of references to “canonical plugins” over the past year, especially at WordCamps by Matt, but we haven’t really posted anything official about the idea, nor have we really made much progress beyond discussions about how awesome it would be to have canonical plugins and how good it would be for [...]

Why do people love your website? They love it because they can find it, because they can use it, because it has the content that they want, and because it works. They may also love the color scheme, the layout, and the graphics. But if they can’t find it or use it, and if the [...]

Just a heads up that Trac commits will be pretty low over the next couple of days, as all the core committers are in Orlando: Matt, Ryan, Andrew, Peter and Mark. We all came for WordCamp Orlando (fun!) and are staying a couple of extra days to discuss the vision for WordPress in the coming [...]

The Voice Browser Working Group has published a Working Draft of Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) 3.0. The primary goal of this document is to bring the advantages of Web-based development and content delivery to interactive voice response applications. VoiceXML…

The XML Schema Working Group has published Last Call Working Draft of W3C XML Schema Definition Language (XSD) 1.1 Part 1: Structures and Part 2: Datatypes. The former specifies the XML Schema Definition Language, which offers facilities for describing the…

Version beta-2 of WordPress 2.9 is ready for your testing pleasure. You can download it or use the WordPress Beta Tester plugin and auto-upgrade a test installation. See all changes since beta 1.

The Web Applications Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Widget Packaging and Configuration. This specification standardizes a packaging format for software known as widgets. Widgets are client-side applications that are authored using Web standards, but whose content…

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published Working Drafts of CSS 2D Transforms Module Level 3 and CSS Transitions Module Level 3. CSS 2D Transforms allows elements rendered by CSS to be transformed in two-dimensional space. CSS Transitions…

The Multimodal Interaction Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces (MMI Architecture), which defines a general and flexible framework providing interoperability among modality-specific components from different vendors – for example, speech recognition from one…

In accordance with the W3C Patent Policy, W3C has launched a Patent Advisory Group (PAG) in response to a disclosure related to the Widgets 1.0: Access Requests Policy specification; see the PAG charter. The WebApps Working Group develops this specification….

Thanksgiving was last week, and I thought about doing a post to thank the people who contribute to WordPress core, since this is a group of people I’m thankful for on a daily basis. I started a draft, and then realized that with 2.9 in beta, we’ll have a release announcement sometime in the next [...]

W3C has launched the HTML5 Japanese Interest Group whose mission is to facilitate focused discussion in Japanese of the HTML5 specification and of specifications closely related to HTML5, to gather comments and questions in Japanese about those specifications, to collect…

As a builder or purchaser of SEO-friendly, W3C compliant websites, you put a lot of effort and perhaps considerable money into making sure your website is great, that people love it and want to stay and buy your product or use your services. The last thing you want is for people to find your site, [...]

How much do people use the Internet? Well, that depends on who they are. It is a subject of much interest to web designers and people who invest in websites. Obviously you want people to read your content and purchase your goods and services. Otherwise you would not go to all the trouble to build [...]

The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of XMLHttpRequest. The XMLHttpRequest specification defines an API that provides scripted client functionality for transferring data between a client and a server. It is the ECMAScript HTTP API….

I was very excited last week to learn that WordPress has been awarded the Overall Best Open Source CMS Award in the 2009 Open Source CMS Awards. This is a landmark for us, as it is the first time we’ve won this award, and it marks a shift in the public perception of WordPress, from [...]

The Web Applications Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of File API. This specification provides an API for representing file objects in web applications, as well as programmatically selecting them and accessing their data. This API is…

The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: The widget Interface. This specification defines an application programming interface (API) for widgets that provides, amongst other things, functionality for accessing a widget’s metadata and…

The Math Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of XML Entity definitions for Characters. It is difficult to write science fluently if scientific characters are not available for use. It is difficult to read science if corresponding…

The Mobile Web For Social Development (MW4D) Interest Group has published a Group Note of Mobile Web for Social Development Roadmap. This document describes some of the current challenges of deploying development-oriented services on mobile phones. It suggests the most…

WordCamp NYC was last weekend, and it was crazy awesome to have so many WordPress users and developers together in one place (final numbers to come, but looks like over 700). One of my favorite moments was right at the end, when someone suggested getting a picture of the core contributors (I’d asked them all [...]

Speaking at the Internet Governance Forum in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, Tim Berners-Lee announced today that World Wide Web Foundation is open for business. World Wide Web Foundation was created with W3C’s support in September 2008, and focuses on advancing…

2.8.6 fixes two security problems that can be exploited by registered, logged in users who have posting privileges.  If you have untrusted authors on your blog, upgrading to 2.8.6 is recommended.
The first problem is an XSS vulnerability in Press This discovered by Benjamin Flesch.  The second problem, discovered by Dawid Golunski, is an issue [...]

We have spoken of the benefits of W3C code validation for SEO and for human usability. The World Wide Web Consortium offers an impressively wide array of tools for validation of website code and content. They really are doing some good work. Here is what they say about their goal and purpose. “The World Wide [...]

Just in case anyone forgot, the first of the November bug hunts for version 2.9 is now in progress, and will last another day. If you’ve got a dev environment set up, please consider pitching in to run some tests and help get us closer to the 2.9 milestone release.

There are six WordCamps coming up before the end of the year, and since I like to make sure people know about it when there’s a WordCamp near them, here’s the list, with some personal commentary thrown in. If you just want the list without my asides, check out the full schedule at WordCamp.org.
WordCamp Phoenix [...]

The W3C community convenes today in Santa Clara, California for Technical Plenary (TPAC) 2009 to discuss: Decentralized Extensibility in HTML5 Maintaining a Healthy Internet Ecosystem — Challenges to an Open Internet Infrastructure Privacy on the Web of Applications –…

Recently we have discussed findability and usability, in the context of custom web design and with reference to W3C compliance. Now let us take one more step, which may be more fun for you than it is for me. And that is readability. The study of how users read is helpful if you want to [...]

As we near completion of the 2.9 milestone, it’s that time of dev cycle again, when we ask all you community developers who’ve been putting off contributing to core to dust off your dev environments and help us get closer to being release-ready. How? Bug hunts! Yes, that time-honored tradition (in the time of WordPress, [...]

The Web Applications Working Group has published updates to five Working Drafts of specifications for APIs that enhance the open Web platform as a runtime environment for full-featured applications: Web Sockets API provides an API for full-duplex communication between a…

The Web Applications Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: Packaging and Configuration, which standardizes a packaging format for software known as widgets. The specification relies on PKWare’s Zip specification as the archive format, XML as…

The Web Applications Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of DataCache API, which provides Web applications with a means to programatically add and remove resources to a “data cache”, which can then be statically served by user…

The Web Applications Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of DataCache API, which provides Web applications with a means to programatically add and remove resources to a “data cache”, which can then be statically served by user…

The Voice Browser Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of State Chart XML (SCXML): State Machine Notation for Control Abstraction. SCXML is a general-purpose event-based state machine language that may be used in a number of ways, including…

The Multimodal Interaction Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Emotion Markup Language (EmotionML) 1.0. EmotionML provides representations of emotions and related states for technological applications. The aim of this draft is to strike a balance…

The Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) 2.0. ATAG defines how authoring tools should help Web developers produce Web content that is accessible and conforms to Web Content…

The Evaluation and Repair Tools Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of the Evaluation and Report Language (EARL) 1.0 Schema, updated Working Drafts of HTTP Vocabulary in RDF 1.0, Representing Content in RDF 1.0, Pointer Methods in…

The Web Services Resource Access Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Web Services Fragment (WS-Fragment). This specification extends the WS-Transfer [WS-Transfer] specification to enable clients to retrieve and manipulate parts or fragments of a WS-Transfer enabled…

The number one reason people give us for not upgrading to the latest version of WordPress is fear that their plugins won’t be compatible. As part of our continuing efforts to make WordPress core, plugin, and theme upgrades as painless as possible, Michael Adams developed and launched a beta of a new “Compatibility” feature in [...]

The Rich Web Application Backplane Incubator Group (XG) published their final report today. The report describes two areas of work undertaken by the XG; authoring patterns helpful in supporting high-function web applications in managing client-side data and user interaction control….

Today W3C announces a new version of a standard for representing knowledge on the Web. OWL 2, part of W3C’s Semantic Web toolkit, allows people to capture their knowledge about a particular domain (say, energy or medicine) and then use…

The Service Modeling Language Working Group has published a Group Note of The SML XLink Reference Scheme. The Service Modeling Language [SML] specification extends the Extensible Mark-up Language and XML Schema with a mechanism for incorporating into XML documents references…

The Semantic Web Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group published three Interest Group notes produced by the Scientific Discourse Task Force: Semantic Web Applications in Neuromedicine (SWAN) Ontology SIOC, SIOC Types and Health Care and Life Sciences SWAN/SIOC: Alignment…

W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the MashSSL Incubator Group, whose mission is to create an open security protocol to solve a fundamental Internet security problem. Specifically, when two web applications communicate through a potentially untrusted user…

W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the MashSSL Incubator Group, whose mission is to create an open security protocol to solve a fundamental Internet security problem. Specifically, when two web applications communicate through a potentially untrusted user…

The SPARQL Working Group published the First Public Working Draft of six SPARQL 1.1 specifications. SPARQL is the query language of the Semantic Web, and SPARQL 1.1 enhances the SPARQL landscape with: SPARQL 1.1 Query – Adds support for aggregates,…

The SPARQL Working Group published the First Public Working Draft of six SPARQL 1.1 specifications. SPARQL is the query language of the Semantic Web, and SPARQL 1.1 enhances the SPARQL landscape with: SPARQL 1.1 Query – Adds support for aggregates,…

The XML Security Working Group has published two First Public Working Drafts: XML Signature Syntax and Processing Version 2.0 and Canonical XML Version 2.0. The former provides integrity, message authentication, and/or signer authentication services for data of any type, whether…

The XML Security Working Group has published two First Public Working Drafts: XML Signature Syntax and Processing Version 2.0 and Canonical XML Version 2.0. The former provides integrity, message authentication, and/or signer authentication services for data of any type, whether…

The Media Annotations Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of API for Media Resource 1.0. This specification defines a client-side API to access metadata information related to media resources on the Web. The overall purpose of the…

The Media Annotations Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of API for Media Resource 1.0. This specification defines a client-side API to access metadata information related to media resources on the Web. The overall purpose of the…

As you know over the past couple of months we have been working on the new features for WordPress 2.9. We have also been working on trying to make WordPress as secure as possible and during this process we have identified a number of security hardening changes that we thought were worth back-porting to the [...]

The Forms Working Group has published a W3C Recommendation of XForms 1.1. Forms are an important part of the Web, and they continue to be the primary means for enabling interactive Web applications. Web applications and electronic commerce solutions…

The Forms Working Group has published a W3C Recommendation of XForms 1.1. Forms are an important part of the Web, and they continue to be the primary means for enabling interactive Web applications. Web applications and electronic commerce solutions…

The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has published a Group Note of Extended Guidelines for Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0. This document supplements W3C Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 [MWBP] by providing additional evaluations of conformance to Best…

The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has published a Group Note of Extended Guidelines for Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0. This document supplements W3C Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 [MWBP] by providing additional evaluations of conformance to Best…

Professional web designer thinking includes a concept called Usability. A focus on W3C compliance helps to achieve that, as compliance will assure that the code works. A broken site isn’t Usable. Careful attention and a thoughtful approach by the coder assures a good measure of Usability, just from practical considerations. We talk about SEO a [...]

The HTML Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of HTML+RDFa. RDFa is intended to solve the problem of machine-readable data in HTML documents. RDFa provides a set of HTML attributes to augment visual data with machine-readable…

The HTML Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of HTML+RDFa. RDFa is intended to solve the problem of machine-readable data in HTML documents. RDFa provides a set of HTML attributes to augment visual data with machine-readable…

The Device APIs and Policy Working Group has published a First Draft of a Group Note of Device APIs Requirements. These are the requirements intended to be met in the development of client-side APIs that enable the creation of…

The Device APIs and Policy Working Group has published a First Draft of a Group Note of Device APIs Requirements. These are the requirements intended to be met in the development of client-side APIs that enable the creation of…

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of CSS Backgrounds and Borders Module Level 3. This document contains the features of CSS level 3 relating to borders and backgrounds. It includes and extends…

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of CSS Backgrounds and Borders Module Level 3. This document contains the features of CSS level 3 relating to borders and backgrounds. It includes and extends…

Today W3C launched its new Web site. This update follows the beta site announcement earlier this year. The new site features a harmonized design, simplified information architecture, new style for technical reports, and new content, including calendars and aggregated…

Today W3C launched its new Web site. This update follows the beta site announcement earlier this year. The new site features a harmonized design, simplified information architecture, new style for technical reports, and new content, including calendars and aggregated…

We have been hard at work now for a few months on the new features that will be coming in WordPress 2.9, and we are near the time when the first beta version will be available. We’ll need your help with beta testing the new features and ironing out any bugs.
There are a number of [...]

The eGovernment Interest Group has been rechartered with a new focus Open Government Data and Education/Outreach. The group is open to all (W3C Members and non-Members alike). We encourage participation from people around the world working on improving the…

The eGovernment Interest Group has been rechartered with a new focus Open Government Data and Education/Outreach. The group is open to all (W3C Members and non-Members alike). We encourage participation from people around the world working on improving the…

2009-10-08: A Patent Advisory Group (PAG) for the Web Applications Working Group published its report, which suggests that W3C should continue the work on the Widgets 1.0: Updates Specification. W3C launched the PAG when Apple Computer, Inc excluded patent claims from the W3C Royalty-Free licensing commitment. The Group concluded that the US Patent Number 5,764,992 is considered not essential according to Section 8 of the W3C Patent Policy, and provided a set of Recommendations to the Web Applications Working Group. (Permalink)

2009-10-08: The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: Widget URIs. Resources inside a widget package are identified and located using a method that is specific to widgets technology. Widget URIs reflect this by providing these specific locators with their own syntax so that resources in widget packages can be readily identified. Comments are welcome through 10 November. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. (Permalink)

2009-10-08: The Product Modelling Incubator Group has published their final report. The mission of the Incubator Group was to enable the use of the (Semantic) Web for Product Modelling (PM): the definition, storage, exchange and sharing of product data. Product data is information about the structure and behaviour of things that are realized in industrial processes. So principally product data is about things that are manmade, but it can also be about things in the natural world that interact with those industrial processes and/or its resulting products. The report describes the role and scope of product data, and initial work in two technical areas (1) quantities, units, and scales; and (2) product structure – the decomposition of wholes in parts and the interconnection relationships between these parts. This publication is part of the Incubator Activity, a forum where W3C Members can innovate and experiment. This work is not on the W3C standards track. (Permalink)

A Patent Advisory Group (PAG) for the Web Applications Working Group published its report, which suggests that W3C should continue the work on the Widgets 1.0: Updates Specification. W3C launched the PAG when Apple Computer, Inc excluded patent claims…

The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: Widget URIs. Resources inside a widget package are identified and located using a method that is specific to widgets technology. Widget URIs reflect this…

The Product Modelling Incubator Group has published their final report. The mission of the Incubator Group was to enable the use of the (Semantic) Web for Product Modelling (PM): the definition, storage, exchange and sharing of product data. Product…

The Product Modelling Incubator Group has published their final report. The mission of the Incubator Group was to enable the use of the (Semantic) Web for Product Modelling (PM): the definition, storage, exchange and sharing of product data. Product…

The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: Widget URIs. Resources inside a widget package are identified and located using a method that is specific to widgets technology. Widget URIs reflect this…

2009-10-06: The W3C community convenes next month in Santa Clara, California for Technical Plenary Week (TPAC) 2009, this year’s edition of an annual week-long opportunity for W3C group participants to share news of progress and to address hot-button technical issues face-to-face, including the future of HTML 5, privacy challenges in an era of powerful Web Applications, and how governments are using the Web to increase transparency and accountability. This year, the Internet Society (ISOC), as part of its mission to support the development of open standards, will sponsor TPAC 2009 and actively participate in the event. In addition to ISOC representatives, participants from other standards development organizations will join in discussion about the health of the “Internet Ecosystem” during the Plenary Day. As previously announced, W3C invites the public to a Developer Gathering on 5 November. In addition, the press are invited to attend a Media Breakfast on 3 November from 7:30-8:30am (Pacific Time) for presentations on some of the key topics W3C will cover during the week. Read the press release and learn more about TPAC 2009. (Permalink)

2009-10-06: The third and possibly final run of the successful online training course An Introduction to W3C Mobile Web Best Practices is due to start on Monday, 12 October. Participants work at their own pace at times to suit them throughout the 9-week course. The program is well-suited to developers with experience of desktop design and production who wish to apply their HTML and CSS skills to the mobile environment. A mixture of lectures and assignments provide hands-on practical experience in using W3C’s Mobile Web Best Practices. Participants will work with both W3C instructors and peers who can share experiences about the real-world challenges of mobile Web design.

2009-10-06: The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has published two Last Call Working Drafts: Mobile Web Application Best Practices and Guidelines for Web Content Transformation Proxies 1.0. The former describes Best Practices for the development and delivery of Web applications on mobile devices. The recommendations expand upon statements made in the Mobile Web Best Practices, especially those that relate to the exploitation of device capabilities and awareness of the delivery context. The latter document provides guidance to implementers of Content Transformation proxies as to whether and how to transform Web content. Content Transformation proxies alter requests sent by user agents to servers and responses returned by servers so that the appearance, structure or control flow of Web applications are modified. Content Transformation proxies are mostly used to convert Web sites designed for desktop computers to a form suitable for mobile devices. Comments on both documents welcome through 6 November. Learn more about the Mobile Web Initiative. (Permalink)

2009-10-06: The Math Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of A MathML for CSS profile. This document describes a profile of MathML 3.0 that could be used to capture structure of mathematical formulae in the way suitable for further CSS formatting. This profile is expected to facilitate adoption of MathML in web browsers and CSS formatters, allowing them to reuse existing CSS visual formatting model, enhanced with a few mathematics-oriented extensions, for rendering of the layout schemata of presentational MathML. Learn more about the W3C Math Activity. (Permalink)

2009-10-06: The Web Applications Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: View Modes Media Feature. This specification is part of the Widgets 1.0 family of specifications. It introduces a feature that allows designers to specify different presentations according to “view modes” (e.g., when a widget is running like any other application, when it is running without “chrome,” or when occupying all of the screen). Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. (Permalink)

The Web Applications Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: View Modes Media Feature. This specification is part of the Widgets 1.0 family of specifications. It introduces a feature that allows designers to specify…

The third and possibly final run of the successful online training course An Introduction to W3C Mobile Web Best Practices is due to start on Monday, 12 October. Participants work at their own pace at times to suit them…

The W3C community convenes next month in Santa Clara, California for Technical Plenary Week (TPAC) 2009, this year’s edition of an annual week-long opportunity for W3C group participants to share news of progress and to address hot-button technical issues…

The Math Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of A MathML for CSS profile. This document describes a profile of MathML 3.0 that could be used to capture structure of mathematical formulae in the way suitable…

The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has published two Last Call Working Drafts: Mobile Web Application Best Practices and Guidelines for Web Content Transformation Proxies 1.0. The former describes Best Practices for the development and delivery of Web…

The Web Applications Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: View Modes Media Feature. This specification is part of the Widgets 1.0 family of specifications. It introduces a feature that allows designers to specify…

2009-10-05: W3C and XBRL International, Inc. are co-sponsoring a Workshop on Improving Access to Financial Data on the Web today and tomorrow, hosted at the offices of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in Arlington, Virginia (USA). The main goal of the Workshop is to identify opportunities and challenges for improving access to financial data on the Web. Participants will discuss how Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) and related XML data standards can best be utilized, and how using XBRL to provide financial data via the Web relates to broader opportunities for Semantic Web technologies. More than 15 speakers and 100 participants will discuss topics such as interoperability and harmonization of standard data formats and the impact of the increased transparency on the economy and society as a whole. For more information, see the Program Agenda and Media Advisory. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)

W3C and XBRL International, Inc. are co-sponsoring a Workshop on Improving Access to Financial Data on the Web today and tomorrow, hosted at the offices of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in Arlington, Virginia (USA). The main goal…

2009-10-01: The Rule Interchange Format (RIF) Working Group has published six Candidate Recommendations. Together, they allow systems using a variety of rule languages and rule-based technologies to interoperate with each other and with Semantic Web technologies.

2009-10-01: The SVG Working Group has published First Public Working Drafts of SVG Color 1.2, Part 2: Language and SVG Color 1.2, Part 1: Primer. The former defines features of the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Language that are specifically for color-managed environments, including document interchange, publishing, and high-quality display. SVG Color extends the control of color, relative to SVG Tiny 1.2, in three ways. Firstly by adding an additional color space for interpolation and compositing; this means that colors are no longer constrained to the sRGB gamut. Secondly by extending the syntax for Paint, thus allowing colors to be specified as calibrated (ICC and named) and uncalibrated (‘device’) color. Thirdly, it mandates the color management of embedded images. The Primer explains the technical background and gives guidelines on how to use the SVG Color specification with SVG 1.2 Tiny and SVG 1.2 Full modules. Learn more about the Graphics Activity. (Permalink)

2009-10-01: Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel. (Permalink)

2009-09-29: The Web Applications Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of WebSimpleDB API. User agents need to store large numbers of objects locally in order to satisfy off-line data requirements of Web applications. Whereas the Web Storage specification is useful for storing pairs of keys and their corresponding values, it does not provide in-order retrieval of keys, efficient searching over values, or storage of duplicate values for a key. The new WebSimpleDB API specification provides a concrete API to perform advanced key-value data management that is at the heart of most sophisticated query processors. It does so by using transactional databases to store keys and their corresponding values. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. (Permalink)

2009-09-29: The XSL-FO subgroup of the XSL Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of Design Notes for Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) 2.0, which contains initial and early work on XSL-FO 2.0. XSL-FO defines an XML vocabulary for formatting and layout of XML documents; use XSLT to transform documents into XSL-FO for on-screen or paper formatting, for example into PDF. Public comments are requested, both from users and implementors of XSL 1.x and from people who have been waiting for new features before using XSL-FO. Lean more about XML. (Permalink)

2009-09-24: The Timed Text Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Timed Text (TT) Authoring Format 1.0 – Distribution Format Exchange Profile (DFXP), used to represent timed text media for the purpose of interchange among authoring systems. Timed text is textual information that is intrinsically or extrinsically associated with timing information. The specification provides a standardized representation of a particular subset of textual information with which stylistic, layout, and timing semantics are associated by an author or an authoring system for the purpose of interchange and potential presentation. Learn more about the Video in the Web Activity. (Permalink)

2009-09-24: The Math Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 3.0. MathML is an XML application for describing mathematical notation and capturing both its structure and content. The goal of MathML is to enable mathematics to be served, received, and processed on the World Wide Web, just as HTML has enabled this functionality for text. Comments are welcome through 11 November. Learn more about the Math Activity. (Permalink)

2009-09-24: The Web Services Resource Access Working Group published updates to five Working Drafts: Web Services Enumeration (WS-Enumeration), Web Services Eventing (WS-Eventing), Web Services Resource Transfer (WS-RT), Web Services Transfer (WS-Transfer), and Web Services Metadata Exchange (WS-MetadataExchange). The first describes a general SOAP-based protocol for enumerating a sequence of XML elements that is suitable for traversing logs, message queues, or other linear information models. The second describes a protocol that allows Web services to subscribe to or accept subscriptions for event notification. The third defines extensions to WS-Transfer that deal primarily with fragment-based access to resources to satisfy the common requirements of WS-ResourceFramework and WS-Management. The fourth describes a general SOAP-based protocol for accessing XML representations of Web service-based resources. The fifth defines how metadata associated with a Web service endpoint can be represented as resources, how metadata can be embedded in endpoint references, and how metadata could be retrieved from a Web service endpoint. Learn more about the Web Services Activity. (Permalink)

2009-09-22: With more than a dozen implementations of OWL 2 reported, the OWL Working Group has published its OWL 2 Web Ontology Language as a Proposed Recommendation. An ontology is a structured set of terms that a particular community uses for organizing data, such as “title”, “author”, and “ISBN” for data about books. OWL 2 is a compatible extension to OWL 1, providing additional features for people using ontologies. The OWL 2 document set contains 13 documents, of which 4 are instructional: overview , primer, new features and rationale, and quick reference. The rdf:PlainLiteral datatype, developed for use by OWL 2 and RIF, is also a Proposed Recommendation. Learn more about the Semantic Web. (Permalink)

2009-09-22: W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the Provenance Incubator Group, whose mission is to provide a state-of-the art understanding and develop a roadmap in the area of provenance for Semantic Web technologies, development, and possible standardization. The group will be chaired by Yolanda Gil. The following W3C Members have sponsored the charter for this group: Renssealaer Polytechnic Institute, Talis Information Limited, University of Manchester, University of Southampton, University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute (USC / ISI), and Vrije Universiteit. Read more about the Incubator Activity, an initiative to foster development of emerging Web-related technologies. Incubator Activity work is not on the W3C standards track. (Permalink)

2009-09-22: W3C invites people to participate in a Workshop on Access Control Application Scenarios on 17-18 November 2009 in Luxembourg. This Workshop is intended to explore evolving application scenarios for access control technologies, such as XACML. Results from a number of recent European research projects in the grid, cloud computing, and privacy areas show overlapping use cases for these technologies that extend beyond classical intra-enterprise applications. The Workshop, co-financed by the European Commission 7th framework program via the PrimeLife project, is free of charge and open to anyone, subject to review of their statement of interest and space availability. Position papers are due 23 October. See the call for participation for more information. Learn more about the Privacy Activity. (Permalink)

2009-09-21: As part of its efforts to broaden participation opportunities in W3C, W3C announces today its first Developer Gathering, to be held 5 November, 2009 during the W3C Technical Plenary Week (TPAC) in Santa Clara, California. Registration is open to the public; W3C is seeking in particular developers and designers who may not participate regularly in W3C groups. Arun Ranganathan (Mozilla), Fantasai, Philippe Le H??garet, and others will speak on a variety of hot topics with a goal of feeding back comments to the groups developing the relevant technology standards. Learn more about the Developer Gathering. (Permalink)

2009-09-21: As part of its efforts to broaden participation opportunities in W3C, W3C announces today its first Developer Gathering, to be held 5 November, 2009 during the W3C Technical Plenary Week (TPAC) in Santa Clara, California. Registration is open to the public; W3C is seeking in particular developers and designers who may not participate regularly in W3C groups. Arun Ranganathan (Mozilla), Fantasai, Philippe Le Hégaret, and others will speak on a variety of hot topics with a goal of feeding back comments to the groups developing the relevant technology standards. Learn more about the Developer Gathering. (Permalink)

2009-09-16: W3C announces today the new RDB2RDF Working Group, whose mission is to standardize a language for mapping relational data and relational database schemas into RDF and OWL, tentatively called the RDB2RDF Mapping Language, R2RML. From the beginning of the deployment of the Semantic Web there has been increasing interest in mapping relational data to the Semantic Web. This is to allow relational data to be combined with other data on the Web, to link semantics directly to relational data and to aid in enterprise data integration. The creation of this Working Group follows the work of a previous W3C Incubator Group in this area. Read the RDB2RDF Working Group Charter and learn more about the Semantic Web. (Permalink)

2009-09-16: W3C announces today the new RDB2RDF Working Group, whose mission is to standardize a language for mapping relational data and relational database schemas into RDF and OWL, tentatively called the RDB2RDF Mapping Language, R2RML. From the beginning of the deployment of the Semantic Web there has been increasing interest in mapping relational data to the Semantic Web. This is to allow relational data to be combined with other data on the Web, to link semantics directly to relational data and to aid in enterprise data integration. The creation of this Working Group follows the work of a previous W3C Incubator Group in this area. Read the RDB2RDF Working Group Charter and learn more about the Semantic Web. (Permalink)

2009-09-15: The WebCGM Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of WebCGM 2.1. Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM) is an ISO standard, defined by ISO/IEC 8632:1999, for the interchange of 2D vector and mixed vector/raster graphics. WebCGM is a profile of CGM, which adds Web linking and is optimized for Web applications in technical illustration, electronic documentation, geophysical data visualization, and similar fields. The Working Group has adopted a public test suite for WebCGM 2.1 and has produced a preliminary WebCGM 2.1 implementation report. Learn more about the Graphics Activity. (Permalink)

2009-09-15: The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Media Queries. HTML4 and CSS2 currently 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. “screen” and “print” are two media types that have been defined. Media queries extend the functionality of media types by allowing more precise labeling of style sheets. Learn more about the Style Activity. (Permalink)

2009-09-10: The Web Applications Working Group has published Working Drafts of Web Storage and Web Database (a First Public Draft). The former defines an API for persistent data storage of key-value pair data in Web clients. The latter defines an API for storing data in databases that can be queried using a variant of SQL. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. (Permalink)

2009-09-10: The Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER) Working Group has published a Group Note of Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER): Test Suite. This document presents test cases for the POWDER technology, which helps to build a Web of trust and make it possible to discover relevant, quality content more efficiently. The tests facilitate and exemplify the creation of POWDER documents of varying complexity and provide a means to assert the conformance of software applications designed to handle POWDER documents. Learn more about the Semantic Web. (Permalink)

2009-09-09: Today, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announces a draft work plan for the eGovernment Interest Group, whose mission is to document, advocate, coordinate and communicate best practices, solutions and approaches to improve the interface between citizens and government through effective use of Web standards. The draft charter, in review by the W3C community until the end of September, focuses on two topics: Open Government Data (OGD), and Education and Outreach. In line with its anticipated focus on Open Government Data, the group also announces today a first draft of Publishing Open Government Data, which provides step-by-step guidelines for putting government data on the Web. Sharing data according to these guidelines enables greater transparency; delivers more efficient public services; and encourages greater public and commercial use and re-use of government information. Learn more about the W3C eGovernment Activity. (Permalink)

2009-09-08: The Internationalization Core Working Group has published Authoring HTML: Handling Right-to-left Scripts as a Working Group Note. This document describes techniques for the use of HTML markup and CSS style sheets when creating content in languages that use right-to-left scripts, such as Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Thaana, Urdu, etc. It builds on (but also goes beyond) markup needed to supplement the Unicode bidirectional algorithm, and also touches on how to prepare content that will later be localized into right-to-left scripts. Learn more about the Internationalization Activity. (Permalink)

2009-09-08: The WebApps Working Group has published a new Working Draft of DOM Level 3 Events, a generic platform- and language-neutral event system which allows registration of event handlers, describes event flow through a tree structure, and provides basic contextual information for each event. DOM3 Events introduces an advanced text and keyboard event model, including composition events for input-method editors and other internationalization issues. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity (Permalink)

2009-09-08: The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has updated the Candidate Recommendation of Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 Revision 1 (CSS 2.1) Specification. This specification defines Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 revision 1. CSS 2.1 is a style sheet language that allows authors and users to attach style (e.g., fonts and spacing) to structured documents (e.g., HTML documents and XML applications). This update corrects some errata in the previous draft. Learn more about the Style Activity. (Permalink)

2009-09-07: Today the W3C India Office opened at a new Host: the Department of Information Technology in the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology. Swaran Lata, who is Director of the Human Centered Computing division (TDIL), will run the new Office with the support of deputy manager Somnath Chandra. W3C Offices act as local points of contact for W3C work and help ensure that W3C and its specifications reach an international audience. W3C would like to thank the India Ministry of Communications and Information Technology for their support in ensuring that W3C has a strong presence in India. The previous Office in India, hosted by C-DAC, has already closed. Learn more about the W3C Offices program. (Permalink)

2009-09-07: Today the W3C India Office opened at a new Host: the Department of Information Technology in the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology. Swaran Lata, who is Director of the Human Centered Computing division (TDIL), will run the new Office with the support of deputy manager Somnath Chandra. W3C Offices act as local points of contact for W3C work and help ensure that W3C and its specifications reach an international audience. W3C would like to thank the India Ministry of Communications and Information Technology for their support in ensuring that W3C has a strong presence in India. The previous Office in India, hosted by C-DAC, has already closed. Learn more about the W3C Offices program. (Permalink)

A stitch in time saves nine. I couldn’t sew my way out of a bag, but it’s true advice for bloggers as well — a little bit of work on an upgrade now saves a lot of work fixing something later.
Right now there is a worm making its way around old, unpatched versions of WordPress. [...]

2009-09-04: Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel. (Permalink)

2009-09-01: Today W3C takes steps toward building a Web of trust, and making it possible to discover relevant, quality content more efficiently. When content providers use POWDER, the Protocol for Web Description Resources, they help people with tasks such as seeking sound medical advice, looking for trustworthy retailers, or searching for content available under a particular license (for instance, a Creative Commons license). The POWDER Working Group published three W3C Recommendations today: Grouping of Resources, Formal Semantics, and Description Resources. For more information about POWDER, including a POWDER Primer and a range of tools, see the group home page. Read the press release and learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)

2009-09-01: The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has published a Group Note of W3C mobileOK Scheme 1.0. mobileOK is designed to improve the Web experience for users of mobile devices by rewarding content providers that adhere to good practice when delivering content to them. Learn more about the Mobile Web Initiative Activity. (Permalink)

2009-08-31: W3C announces today the next edition of its successful online course to introduce Web developers and designers to its Mobile Web Best Practices. The next session runs from 7 September to 9 November 2009. W3C received very positive reviews from participants who attended the previous session, including:

2009-08-27: The Voice Browser Working Group has updated the Candidate Recommendation of Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) Version 1.1. SSML is designed to provide a rich, XML-based markup language for assisting the generation of synthetic speech in Web and other applications. Although the Working Group has not formally identified any features as being at-risk, as a result of the previous publication, the Working Group now understands that some features may not receive adequate implementation experience. This draft identifies them in the status section and asks for feedback. A few editorial errors in the previous draft and the Implementation Report Plan document were also fixed. A list of changes from the previous draft is available. Learn more about the Voice Browser Activity. (Permalink)

2009-08-26: The HTML Working Group has published Working Drafts of HTML 5 and HTML 5 differences from HTML 4. In HTML 5, new features are introduced to help Web application authors, new elements are introduced based on research into prevailing authoring practices, and special attention has been given to defining clear conformance criteria for user agents in an effort to improve interoperability. “HTML 5 differences from HTML 4″ describes the differences between HTML 4 and HTML 5 and provides some of the rationale for the changes. Learn more about HTML. (Permalink)

2009-08-26: Tim Berners-Lee announced today that two people will join Sam Ruby (IBM) in co-Chairing the HTML Working Group: Paul Cotton (Microsoft) and Maciej Stachowiak (Apple). Chris Wilson has stepped down as co-Chair and indicated that he will be changing his focus to programmability in the web platform. As Berners-Lee wrote about this transition, “The work of this group is tremendously important to the Web. I am pleased that all three co-Chairs have taken on the responsibility for working closely with the editor and group to make HTML 5 a success.” More information about the new Chairs is available in Berners-Lee’s announcement. Learn more about the HTML Working Group. (Permalink)

2009-08-25: SVG Open 2009, the 7th International Conference on Scalable Vector Graphics, will be held 2-4 October, hosted by Google in Mountain View, California, with workshops hosted by IBM, on 5 October. The theme is “SVG Coming of Age”, reflecting increased industry support and interest by Web designers and developers. The schedule and confirmed keynote speakers are now available. Over 70 presentations will be delivered by SVG experts from around the globe, on topics including script libraries, authoring tools, mobiles, Web mapping and geo-location services, and much more. Chris Lilley, Doug Schepers, and the W3C SVG Working Group will be participating. Learn more about W3C’s SVG Activity. (Permalink)

2009-08-25: SVG Open 2009, the 7th International Conference on Scalable Vector Graphics, will be held 2-4 October, hosted by Google in Mountain View, California, with workshops hosted by IBM, on 5 October. The theme is “SVG Coming of Age”, reflecting increased industry support and interest by Web designers and developers. The schedule and confirmed keynote speakers are now available. Over 70 presentations will be delivered by SVG experts from around the globe, on topics including script libraries, authoring tools, mobiles, Web mapping and geo-location services, and much more. Chris Lilley, Doug Schepers, and the W3C SVG Working Group will be participating. Learn more about W3C’s SVG Activity. (Permalink)

2009-08-25: The Voice Browser Working Group has published a Working Draft of Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) 3.0. This document specifies VoiceXML 3.0, a modular XML language for creating interactive media dialogs that feature synthesized speech, recognition of spoken and DTMF key input, telephony, mixed initiative conversations, and recording and presentation of a variety of media formats including digitized audio, and digitized video. A list of changes from the previous draft is available. Learn more about the Voice Browser Activity. (Permalink)

2009-08-20: The Web Applications Working Group has published updates to Working Drafts of XMLHttpRequest and XMLHttpRequest Level 2. The XMLHttpRequest specification is part of the Web application technology stack, enabling Ajax-style development. XMLHttpRequest defines an API that provides scripted client functionality for transferring data between a client and a server. XMLHttpRequest Level 2 offers additional features, such as cross-origin requests, progress events, and the handling of byte streams for both sending and receiving. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. (Permalink)

2009-08-19: W3C is pleased to announce the relaunch of the Multimodal Interaction Working Group to develop technology that enables users to use their preferred modes of interaction with the Web. Deborah Dahl (Invited Expert) chairs the group which is chartered to develop open standards to adapt to device, user and environmental conditions, and to allow multiple modes of Web interaction including GUI, speech, vision, pen, gestures, haptic interfaces, sensor data, etc. W3C Members may use this form to join the Working Group. Read about the Multimodal Interaction Activity. (Permalink)

2009-08-18: Today W3C announces a new standard that builds a bridge between the world of knowledge organization systems – including thesauri, classifications, subject headings, taxonomies, and folksonomies – and the linked data community, bringing benefits to both. Libraries, museums, newspapers, government portals, enterprises, social networking applications, and other communities that manage large collections of books, historical artifacts, news reports, business glossaries, blog entries, and other items can now use Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) to leverage the power of linked data. The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group also published today two Group Notes with the Recommendation, updating the SKOS Primer and SKOS Use Cases and Requirements. Read the press release and testimonials and learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)

2009-08-18: The Forms Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of XForms 1.1. XForms is not a free-standing document type, but is intended to be integrated into other markup languages, such as XHTML, ODF or SVG. XForms 1.1 refines the XML processing platform introduced by XForms 1.0 by adding several new submission capabilities, action handlers, utility functions, user interface improvements, and helpful datatypes as well as a more powerful action processing facility, including conditional, iterated and background execution, the ability to manipulate data arbitrarily and to access event context information. Comments are welcome through 22 September. Learn more about the XForms Activity. (Permalink)

2009-08-18: The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: APIs and Events. Widgets are full-fledged client-side applications that are authored using Web standards. Examples range from simple clocks, stock tickers, news streamers, games and weather forecasters, to complex applications that pull data from multiple sources to be “mashed-up” and presented to a user in some interesting and useful way. The APIs and Events specification defines a set of APIs and events for the Widgets 1.0 family of specifications. Comments are welcome through 15 September. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. (Permalink)

2009-08-18: The Emergency Information Interoperability Framework Incubator Group published their final report. The group also published Emergency Information Interoperability Frameworks, which describes some critical requirements for an interoperability information framework for emergency management, and provides candidate components of an ontology that can support interoperability for some common use cases. The approach discussed outlines how one can achieve information interoperability across the stakeholder functions within the area of emergency management. The group recommends that W3C initiate an Interest Group to continue the work of the Incubator Group and expand the outreach to standards development through partnerships with professional communities and interoperability workshops. This publication is part of the Incubator Activity, a forum where W3C Members can innovate and experiment. This work is not on the W3C standards track. (Permalink)

Yesterday a vulnerability was discovered: a specially crafted URL could be requested that would allow an attacker to bypass a security check to verify a user requested a password reset. As a result, the first account without a key in the database (usually the admin account) would have its password reset and a new password [...]

Every now and then I see someone ask in the dev channel how they can meet up with other local WordPress developers. We’re thinking about ways to make WordPress.org more of a resource to facilitate local connections, but in the meantime, I thought it might be helpful to publicize some upcoming WordCamps, the [...]

2009-08-06: The XML Core Working Group has published the Third Edition of Namespaces in XML 1.0 as W3C Proposed Edited Recommendation. XML Namespaces provide a simple method for qualifying element and attribute names used in Extensible Markup Language documents by associating them with namespaces identified by URI references. The Third Edition as proposed incorporates all outstanding errata. The review period is open until 14 September 2009. Learn more about the XML Activity. (Permalink)

2009-08-04: The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of CSSOM View Module. This specification describes APIs that should be useful for Web application authors. The APIs inspect and manipulate the view information of a document, such as the position of element layout boxes, the width of the viewport, and also an element’s scroll position. Learn more about the Style Activity. (Permalink)

2009-08-04: The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: Access Requests Policy. This specification defines the security model controlling network access from within a widget, as well as a method for widget authors to request that the user agent grant access to certain network resources. Comments are welcome through 20 September 2009. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. (Permalink)

Unfortunately, I missed some places when fixing the privilege escalation issues for 2.8.1.  Luckily, the entire WordPress community has our backs.  Several folks in the community dug deeper and discovered areas that were overlooked.  With their help, the remaining issues are fixed in 2.8.3.  Since this is a security release, upgrading is highly recommended.  Download [...]

Earlier this month, over 3500 of you responded to our survey asking you to help us prioritize some of the media features that had been suggested for the 2.9 release. While the exact features for 2.9 have not been hammered out yet, as we continue to match up developers with features, we wanted to share [...]

2009-07-31: The XML Security Working Group published six documents related to XML signature and encryption. XML Signatures provide integrity, message authentication, and/or signer authentication services for data of any type, whether located within the XML that includes the signature or elsewhere.

The WordPress team had initially committed to maintaining the WordPress 2.0.x legacy branch until 2010. Unfortunately, we bit off more than we could chew—the 2.0.x branch is now retired and deprecated, a few months shy of 2010.
Many of the security improvements to the new versions of WordPress in the last couple of years were complete [...]

We’ve recently made some changes to help improve the communication between plugin authors and plugin users about the changes that are made between versions.
We feel that all software should have a changelog that details, at a high level, what changes have been made in each version so that the user can make an informed decision [...]

WordPress 2.8.2 fixes an XSS vulnerability. Comment author URLs were not fully sanitized when displayed in the admin. This could be exploited to redirect you away from the admin to another site.  Download 2.8.2 or automatically upgrade from the Tools->Upgrade page of your blog’s admin.

WordPress 2.8.1 fixes many bugs and tightens security for plugin administration pages. Core Security Technologies notified us that admin pages added by certain plugins could be viewed by unprivileged users, resulting in information being leaked. Not all plugins are vulnerable to this problem, but we advise upgrading to 2.8.1 to be safe.
What [...]

2.8.1 is nigh.  Release Candidate 1 is our last stop before the final release.  Please download RC1, review the changes made since beta 2, and have a look at all of the tickets fixed in 2.8.1.  Thanks for testing WordPress.

The Web Applications Working Group has published the Last Call Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: Packaging and Configuration. This document standardizes a Zip-based packaging format, an XML-based configuration document format and a series of steps that user agents follow…

The Web Applications Working Group has published the Working Draft 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…

The Web Applications Working Group has published the W3C Recommendation of Element Traversal Specification. This specification defines the ElementTraversal interface, which allows script navigation of the elements of a DOM tree, excluding all other nodes in the DOM, such…

Creating beautiful and accessible interactive content was made easier today with the release of the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Tiny 1.2 Recommendation.  Already implemented and deployed in mobile phones, media centers, and browsers around the world, this open standard…

The Rule Interchange Format (RIF) Working Group published five new Working Drafts today. Since the Last Call Working Draft of RIF Basic Logic Dialect (BLD), the group has been developing other key dialects, components, and test cases. The new…