W3C

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 for retrieving Element nodes from the DOM by matching against a group of selectors, and for testing if a given element matches a particular selector. It is often desirable to perform DOM operations on a specific set of elements in a document. These methods simplify the process of acquiring and testing specific elements, especially compared with the more verbose techniques defined and used in the past. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

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, which adds Web linking and is optimized for Web applications in technical illustration, electronic documentation, geophysical data visualization, and similar fields. WebCGM 2.1, refines and completes the features of the major WebCGM 2.0 release. WebCGM 2.0 added a DOM (API) specification for programmatic access to WebCGM objects, a specification of an XML Companion File (XCF) architecture, and extended the graphical and intelligent content of WebCGM 1.0. Comments are welcome through 31 January. Learn more about the Graphics Activity.

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 defined in HTML5. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

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 outcome reflects the correct application of the tie-breaking algorithm.

Original message from 11 January: The W3C Advisory Committee has re-elected Ashok Malhotra (Oracle) and Henry Thompson (U. of Edinburgh) to the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG). Continuing TAG participants are John Kemp (Nokia), Larry Masinter (Adobe), T.V. Raman (Google). The Director is also expected to appoint three individuals very soon. The mission of the TAG is to build consensus around principles of Web architecture and to interpret and clarify these principles when necessary, to resolve issues involving general Web architecture brought to the TAG, and to help coordinate cross-technology architecture developments inside and outside W3C.

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 would like to know how this resource works for you and how we can improve it. See the blog post: Take a few minutes to encourage web accessibility. Your voice counts. Learn about Accessibility and visit the WAI home page.