W3.org Weekly News

The SVG Working Group has published a Working Draft of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 2. This specification defines the features and syntax for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Version 2, a language for describing two-dimensional vector and mixed vector/raster graphics. Changes in this working draft include introduction of a new ‘hatch’ element as a refinement on patterns, improved accessibility and integration with HTML through the addition of the ‘tabindex’ attribute and changes to the ‘foreignObject’ element, addition of a new 'auto-start-reverse' attribute value for markers, clarification of CSS transforms on SVG content, and various updates to bring SVG closer in line with CSS best practices. See the full list of modifications in the SVG changes appendix. Learn more about the Graphics Activity.

The XML Security Working Group has published a Group Note of Test cases for Canonical XML 2.0. This document outlines test cases for Canonical XML 2.0. Learn more about the Security Activity.

W3C published today a report summarizing the Open Data on the Web workshop that took place in April. The report summarizes the major themes discussed and conclusions arising from them. Participants discussed how to bridge the gap between the worlds of tabular and linked data, and how to ensure the long term growth of the Web as a platform for data.

Sponsored by Google, Adobe and Microsoft, the workshop was organized by W3C in conjunction with the Open Data Institute and the Open Knowledge Foundation, and hosted by Google at Campus London. Learn more about the Semantic Web.

The Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG) invites comments on a new draft document: Easy Checks - A First Review of Web Accessibility. Easy Checks helps you assess if a Web page addresses accessibility. It provides simple steps for anyone who can use the Web; no accessibility knowledge or skill is required. The checks cover just a few accessibility issues and are designed to be quick and easy, rather than definitive. Learn more about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

One aspect of mobile accessibility is how web browsers on mobile devices support the accessibility needs of people with disabilities. Accessibility of web browsers is covered in User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG). The User Agent Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (UAWG) today published an updated Working Draft of Implementing UAAG 2.0, which explains how browsers, media players, and other "user agents" should support accessibility for people with disabilities and work with assistive technologies. The update provides a page of Mobile Accessibility Examples from UAAG that show how web browsers that follow UAAG benefit people with disabilities using the Web on mobile devices. Learn more about W3C WAI's broader work related to Mobile Accessibility and about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

The HTML Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of the HTML5 Image Description Extension. This specification defines the "longdesc" attribute that enables web authors to provide longer text descriptions for complex images. It is developed by the HTML Accessibility Task Force in coordination with the HTML Working Group and the WAI Protocols and Formats Working Group (PFWG). Please see important additional information in the call for review e-mail. This Working Draft is available for review through 20 June 2013 to determine if there are any outstanding issues before it progresses to Last Call. Learn more about the HTML Activity and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

The Web Applications Working Group has published two documents today:

• A Group Note of Widget Updates. This specification defines a process and a document format to allow a user agent to update an installed widget package with a different version of a widget package. A widget cannot automatically update itself; instead, a widget relies on the user agent to manage the update process. The working group reached consensus to stop work on this specification. It is published for archival reasons and no longer progresses along the W3C's Recommendation Track.
• A Working Draft of Introduction to Web Components. This document is a non-normative reference, which provides an overview of Web Components. It summarizes the normative information in the respective specifications in easy-to-digest prose with illustrations.

Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The W3C Advisory Committee has filled four 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 2013, the nine Advisory Board participants are Ann Bassetti (Boeing), Jim Bell (HP), Tantek Çelik (Mozilla), Michael Champion (Microsoft), Steve Holbrook (IBM), Charles McCathieNevile (Yandex), Qiuling Pan (Huawei), Jean-Charles Verdié (MStar Semiconductor), and Chris Wilson (Google). Many thanks to Ora Lassila (Nokia) and Takeshi Natsuno (Keio University) whose term ends this month. Read more about the Advisory Board.

The HTML Working Group has updated three Working Drafts and published three Group Notes:

• a Working Draft of HTML 5.1. This specification defines the 5th major version, first minor revision of the core language of the World Wide Web: the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). In this version, new features continue to be introduced to help Web application authors, new elements continue to be introduced based on research into prevailing authoring practices, and special attention continues to be given to defining clear conformance criteria for user agents in an effort to improve interoperability.
• a Working Draft of Differences from HTML4. HTML is the core language of the World Wide Web. The W3C publishes HTML5 and HTML5.1. The WHATWG publishes HTML, which is a rough superset of W3C HTML5.1. "Differences from HTML4" describes the differences of the HTML specifications from those of HTML4, and calls out cases where they differ from each other.
• a Working Draft of HTML Canvas 2D Context, Level 2. This specification defines the 2D Context for the HTML canvas element. The 2D Context provides objects, methods, and properties to draw and manipulate graphics on a canvas drawing surface.
• a Group Note of HTML5: Edition for Web Authors. This document, now discontinued and made available for historical purposes, is targeted toward Web authors and others who are not UA implementors and who want a view of the HTML specification that focuses more precisely on details relevant to using the HTML language to create Web documents and Web applications.
• a Group Note of main element - an HTML5 extension specification. This specification, now integrated into the HTML specification and no longer developed separately, defines an element to be used for the identification of the main content area of a document. It also defines an HTML element that embodies the semantics and function of the WAI-ARIA landmark role=main.
• a Group Note of HTML: The Markup Language (an HTML language reference). This document describes the HTML markup language and provides details to help producers of HTML content create documents that conform to the language. This document has been discontinued and is only made available for historical purposes. For an up to date reference on HTML elements (and more) please consult Web Platform Docs.

Learn more about the HTML Activity.

The Technical Architecture Group has published the First Public Working Draft of URLs in Data Primer. This document describes how to define data formats and publish the information necessary to support an application in determining which mode is intended when it encounters a URL in data. Learn more about the Technical Architecture Group.

The Web Application Security Working Group has published a Working Draft of Content Security Policy 1.1. This document defines a policy language used to declare a set of content restrictions for a Web resource, and a mechanism for transmitting the policy from a server to a client where the policy is enforced. Learn more about the Security Activity.

W3C announced today Get Smart: Smart Homes, Cars and Devices on the Web, a W3C Workshop on Rich Multimodal Application Development, 22-23 July 2013, Metropolitan New York/NJ, USA. The event is hosted by Openstream.

The goal of this workshop is to highlight the merits of HTML5 and the W3C Multimodal Interaction (MMI) Architecture and to demonstrate the maturity of the MMI Architecture and its suitability for developing innovative and compelling user-experiences across applications/devices.

This Workshop is of particular interest to industries seeking to leverage the dramatic increase in new modes of interaction, such as speech, touch, gesture, handwriting, video cameras, and other sensors. Industries including health care, financial services, publishing, broadcasting, automotive, gaming, TV's, and consumer devices will find this workshop especially valuable as a way to learn how W3C standards support these new forms of interaction.

W3C membership is not required for participation. The event is open to all. All participants are required to submit a position paper by 24 June.

On 18 June the MultilingualWeb-LT Working Group holds a showcase event in Dublin about the upcoming Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) 2.0 specification. Group participants demonstrate implementations for authoring ITS 2.0 data categories, for using them in localization workflows, and for improving machine translation or other language technology processes with ITS 2.0. Participation is free, but registration is required. Learn more about the Internationalization Activity.

In accordance with the W3C Patent Policy, W3C has launched a Patent Advisory Group (PAG) in response to a disclosure related to the Push API specification published by the Web Applications Working Group; see the PAG charter.

W3C launches a PAG to resolve issues in the event a patent has been disclosed that may be essential, but is not available under the W3C Royalty-Free licensing requirements. Public comments regarding this disclosure may be sent to public-push-pag@w3.org (with public archive). Learn more about Patent Advisory Groups.

Registration is open for the W3C HTML5 training course that starts 3 June 2013 and lasts six weeks. Experienced trainer Michel Buffa will cover the techniques developers and designers need to create great Web pages and apps. Topics include video, animations, forms, and APIs to create location-based services, as well as offline applications. Students receive a certificate upon course completion. Register and learn more about W3DevCampus, W3C's online training for Web developers.

The Government Linked Data Working Group has published two Group Notes today:

• Registered Organization Vocabulary. The Registered Organization Vocabulary is a profile of the Organization Ontology for describing organizations that have gained legal entity status through a formal registration process, typically in a national or regional register.
• Asset Description Metadata Schema (ADMS). ADMS is a profile of DCAT, used to describe semantic assets (or just 'Assets'), defined as highly reusable metadata (e.g. xml schemata, generic data models) and reference data (e.g. code lists, taxonomies, dictionaries, vocabularies) that are used for eGovernment system development.

Learn more about the eGovernment Activity.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group and the SVG Working Group have published a Working Draft of Filter Effects 1.0. Filter effects are a way of processing an element's rendering before it is displayed in the document. Typically, rendering an element via CSS or SVG can conceptually be described as if the element, including its children, are drawn into a buffer (such as a raster image) and then that buffer is composited into the elements parent. Filters apply an effect before the compositing stage. Examples of such effects are blurring, changing color intensity and warping the image. Although originally designed for use in SVG, filter effects are a set of operations to apply on an image buffer and therefore can be applied to nearly any presentational environment, including CSS. They are triggered by a style instruction (the ‘filter’ property). This specification describes filters in a manner that allows them to be used in content styled by CSS, such as HTML and SVG. It also defines a CSS property value function that produces a CSS <image> value. Learn more about the Style Activity, and the Graphics Activity.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published three Working Drafts today:

• CSS Exclusions Module Level 1. CSS Exclusions define arbitrary areas around which inline content (CSS21) can flow. CSS Exclusions can be defined on any CSS block-level elements. CSS Exclusions extend the notion of content wrapping previously limited to floats.
• CSS Regions Module Level 1. The CSS regions module allows content to flow across multiple areas called regions. The regions are not necessarily contiguous in the document order. The CSS regions module provides an advanced content flow mechanism, which can be combined with positioning schemes as defined by other CSS modules such as the Multi-Column Module or the Grid Layout Module to position the regions where content flows.

Learn more about the Style Activity.

W3C is pleased to invite the Japanese developer community to attend the first ever W3C developer meetup, in Tokyo, Japan, on Saturday 8 June 2013. Chaired by Marie-Claire Forgue (W3C) and Kensaku Komatsu (NTT Communications), the event's agenda consists of a mix of presentations and demonstrations by W3C members and staff, on topics such as HTML5, CSS3, Web Security, Testing, etc. Web designers and application developers are encouraged to gather for an evening of discussions and networking. Participation in the meetup is open to anyone at no cost, but space is limited. Please register before 6 June 2013. W3C warmly thanks both GREE for hosting the event and html5j for additional support.

The Web Application Security Working Group has published a Working Draft of User Interface Security Directives for Content Security Policy. This document defines directives for the Content Security Policy mechanism to declare a set of input protections for a web resource's user interface, defines a non-normative set of heuristics for Web user agents to implement these input protections, and a reporting mechanism for when they are triggered. Learn more about the Security Activity.