W3C

The Web Performance Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of Resource Timing Level 2. This specification defines an interface for web applications to access the complete timing information for resources in a document.

The Efficient XML Interchange Working Group has published a W3C Recommendation of Canonical EXI. This specification describes a relatively simple method for generating a physical representation, the canonical form, of an EXI document that accounts for the permissible differences. An example of the applications targeted by this specification is one that needs to guarantee non-repudiation using XML Signature yet allows certain flexibility for intermediaries to reconstitute the documents before they reach final destination without breaking the signatures. Note that two documents may have differing canonical forms yet still be equivalent in a given context based on more elaborate application-specific equivalence rules which is out of scope of this specification.

W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee joins the Computer Science Department at the University of Oxford as a Professor, as announced by Oxford on Thursday. Sir Tim graduated from the University of Oxford with a first-class degree in Physics in 1976 and returns 40 years later to become a member of the Department of Computer Science and carry out computer science research.

Tim continues to shape the future of the web in his role as Director of both the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the World Wide Web Foundation. Tim also continues as a full-time professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA, where he is based, and where he leads the Decentralized Information Group research.

The W3C Social Web Working Group is calling for review of Webmention, which is now a Proposed Recommendation. Webmention provides a mechanism for a webpage to notify another webpage when it mentions its URL, and when the content around the mention changes or is deleted. From the receiver’s perspective, it’s a way to request notifications when other sites mention it. This mechanism is a core building block for a decentralized (social) Web, because it allows sites to automatically learn about connected content, without any prior setup or agreement. For users, an immediate benefit is cross-site comments. Comments on the PR are welcome until 30 November.

The W3C Social Web Working Group is calling for implementations of Linked Data Notifications (LDN), which is now a Candidate Recommendation. LDN describes how servers (receivers) can have messages pushed to them by applications (senders), as well as how other applications (consumers) may retrieve those messages for use, for example in a user interface, or an automated process. Any resource (like a blog post, or a user profile) can advertise a receiving endpoint (Inbox) for the messages targeted to that resource. The messages themselves are expressed in RDF, and can contain any data. Implementations can be any or all of senders, recievers or consumers. Existing Linked Data Platform implementations are already LDN conformant receivers – an LDN Inbox is just an LDP Container – so we particularly encourage testing and reports from previous implementors of LDP.

The Web Performance Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of High Resolution Time Level 2. This specification defines an API that provides the current time in sub-millisecond resolution and such that it is not subject to system clock skew or adjustments.

Today, W3C announced the start of its new W3Cx MOOC: CSS Introduction, designed in cooperation with the Microsoft Corporation. This 5-week long course will teach how to style your Web sites like a pro, with fonts, colors, layout, etc.

If you start now, you will be just in time to celebrate the 20th anniversary of CSS with us on 17 December and create a cool design to say “Happy Birthday, CSS!”. Learn more about W3Cx courses.