W3C

The Web Platform Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of Web Storage (Second Edition). This specification defines an API for persistent data storage of key-value pair data in Web clients, and introduces two related mechanisms, similar to HTTP session cookies, for storing name-value pairs on the client side. Comments are welcome through 08 January.

The Privacy Interest Group has published a Group Note of Fingerprinting Guidance for Web Specification Authors (Draft). Exposure of settings and characteristics of browsers can impact user privacy by allowing for browser fingerprinting. This document defines different types of fingerprinting, considers distinct levels of mitigation for the related privacy risks and provides guidance for Web specification authors on how to balance these concerns when designing new Web features.

The Web Platform Working Group has published two Working Drafts:

• Web App Manifest: This specification defines a JSON-based manifest that provides developers with a centralized place to put metadata associated with a web application. This includes, but is not limited to, the web application’s name, links to icons, as well as the preferred URL to open when a user launches the web application. The manifest also allows developers to declare a default orientation for their web application, as well as providing the ability to set the display mode for the application (e.g., in fullscreen). Additionally, the manifest allows a developer to “scope” a web application to a URL. This restricts the URLs to which the manifest is applied and provides a means to “deep link” into a web application from other applications.
• Selection API: This document is a preliminary draft of a specification for the Selection API and selection related functionality. It replaces a couple of old sections of the HTML specification, the selection part of the old DOM Range specification.

The XQuery WG and XSLT WG have published a W3C Recommendation of XQuery and XPath Full Text 3.0. This document defines the syntax and formal semantics of XQuery and XPath Full Text 3.0, which is a language that extends XQuery 3.0 (XQuery 3.0: An XML Query Language) and XPath 3.0 (XML Path Language (XPath) 3.0) with full-text search capabilities.

In response to demand from developers in our community wanting to interact with W3C’s data, we have developed an API. Through it we are making available public data on Specifications, Groups, Organizations and Users. We are providing a JSON format initially with alternate formats in the works and we will be expanding what information we expose over time. For more information please see the project page on Github.