W3C

Registration is open for new editions of three W3C online courses that begin in early 2015:

• JavaScript [Register]. This course runs for 4 weeks starting 26 January 2015. This course provides instruction about JavaScript good practices, tricks, and tools, illustrated through examples and assignments.
• HTML5 [Register]. This course runs for 6 weeks, starting 2 February 2015. This course covers video, time based animation, 2D geometric transformations, Web Audio API, Web components and much more.
• Responsive Web Design [Register]. This course runs for 5 weeks, starting 6 February 2015. This course leads you step by step through an approach that focuses on HTML and CSS to make your Web site fit in all viewport sizes.

An early bird rate is available to all above courses. Learn more about W3DevCampus, the official W3C online training for Web developers. See also our self-explanatory fun video.

Today the XSLT Working Group and the XQuery Working Group jointly published Candidate Recommendations and invite implementation of XPath 3.1 and supporting documents. The XQuery Working Group published Candidate Recommendations and invites implementation of XQuery 3.1 and XQueryX 3.1. The supporting documents are XPath Functions and Operators; XQuery and XPath Data Model. XQuery 3.1 and XPath 3.1 introduce improved support for working with JSON data with map and array data structures as well as loading and serializing JSON; additional support for HTML class attributes, HTTP dates, scientific notation, cross-calling between XSLT and XQuery and more. The Serialization specification remains a Last Call Working Draft and was not republished, in order to improve JSON, map and array support in response to a Last Call Comment; it is expected to follow the other documents in the New Year. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published two documents today:

• A First Public Working Draft of CSS Inline Layout Module Level 3. The CSS formatting model provides for a flow of elements and text inside of a container to be wrapped into lines. The formatting of elements and text within a line, its positioning in the inline progression direction, and the breaking of lines are described in CSS Text Module Level 3. This module describes the positioning in the block progression direction both of elements and text within lines and of the lines themselves. This positioning is often relative to a baseline. It also describes special features for formatting of first lines and drop caps. It extends on the model in CSS 2.1.
• A Working Draft of CSS Box Alignment Module Level 3. This module contains the features of CSS relating to the alignment of boxes within their containers in the various CSS box layout models: block layout, table layout, flex layout, and grid layout.

CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, in speech, etc. Learn more about the Style Activity.

The XML Processing Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of XProc 2.0: An XML Pipeline Language, together with a Standard Step Library. XProc is an XML pipeline language; that is, a declarative dataflow language used to express steps required to process XML documents, coordinating operations such as querying, validation, inclusion, transformation and sorting. The XProc step library defines names and characteristics for a set of pipeline steps that every XProc processor is expected to support, as well as additional optional steps. Lean more about the XML Activity.

An updated version of the Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools List is now available. Web accessibility evaluation tools are software programs or online services that help determine if web content meets accessibility guidelines. Information about features of evaluation tools that help with evaluation is in Selecting Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools. Web accessibility evaluation tool vendors are encouraged to submit information about their tool to the list. Learn more about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

W3C announced today the eighth MultilingualWeb workshop in a series of events exploring the mechanisms and processes needed to ensure that the World Wide Web lives up to its potential around the world and across barriers of language and culture. To be held 29 April 2015 in Riga, this workshop is made possible by the generous support of the LIDER project. The workshop is part of the Riga Summit 2015 on the Multilingual Digital Single Market (27-29 April). Anyone may attend the workshop and the summit at no charge and the W3C welcomes participation by both speakers and non-speaking attendees. Early registration is encouraged due to limited space.

Building on the success of seven highly regarded previous workshops, this workshop will emphasize new technology developments that may lead to new opportunities for the Multilingual Web. The workshop brings together participants interested in the best practices and standards needed to help content creators, localizers, language tools developers, and others meet the challenges of the multilingual Web. It provides further opportunities for networking across communities that span the various aspects involved. We are particularly interested in speakers who can demonstrate novel solutions for reaching out to a global, multilingual audience. Registration is available online.