w3c

BARCELONA--Facebook would like to build more mobile Web apps and fewer mobile native apps. Really, it would -- but browsers just aren't up to it, the company has concluded.

Web apps naturally span the multitudes of mobile devices that Facebook loves to run on, but they support Web standards so inconsistently that it's a developer's nightmare, said Facebook Chief Technology Officer Bret Taylor, speaking here at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. So Facebook is trying to do something about it: "We're taking on mobile web standards," Taylor said.

It's a two-pronged effort. … Read more

Microsoft, Google, and Netflix have proposed a standard for copy-protected Web video, but HTML editor Ian Hickson has dealt it a serious blow by calling it impractical and "unethical."

"I believe this proposal is unethical and that we should not pursue it," Hickson said in a mailing list message this week. "The proposal...does not provide robust content protection, so it would not address this use case even if it wasn't unethical," he added.

The Web video DRM debate--and this one isn't the first--shows the difficulties of reconciling open standards with the … Read more

The dominance of Apple and Google mobile browsers is leading to a situation that's even worse for Web programming than the former dominance of Internet Explorer, a standards group leader warned today.

Daniel Glazman, co-chairman of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) group overseeing the formatting and effects standard called Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), said that programmers are overlooking other browsers when they use newer CSS features--even when those other browsers support the features.

The result is that those other browsers--Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Opera, chiefly--might have to essentially masquerade themselves as other browsers. When that happens, the "… Read more

WASHINGTON--A Federal Trade Commission official says that industry hasn't yet done enough to implement Do Not Track and that legislation to mandate it may still be necessary.

"I don't think we're quite there yet," Julie Brill, a Democratic FTC commissioner, said this week at a conference organized by the Online Trust Alliance.

As interest-based advertising, sometimes called behavioral advertising, has spread, so has interest in some form of Do Not Track mechanism inspired by the federal Do Not Call Registry. Developers have added tools to Chrome, Firefox, and Safari to implement different versions of Do … Read more

The World Wide Web Consortium has begun its effort to speed its processes for standardizing Web technology.

Those wishing a less cumbersome way to evaluate and create new standards now can use what the W3C calls Community Groups, an idea that's been under development for months. The W3C also announced the formation of eight such groups, including ones focusing on the Web payments, Web education, and semantic news.

"Innovation and standardization build on each other," said W3C Chief Executive Jeff Jaffe in a statement. "As the pace of innovation accelerates and more industries embrace W3C's … Read more

Much of the Web world has moved on to CSS 3, but today the World Wide Web Consortium has declared the CSS 2.1 standard for Web page formatting to be done.

In W3C standards lingo, CSS 2.1 has reached "recommendation" stage. Phillipe Le Hegaret, leader of the HTML working at the W3C group, announced the milestone on Twitter today.

Browser makers, even longtime laggard Microsoft, have turned much of their attention to CSS 3, which offers glamorous new features such as animating the transition from one page to another, endowing boxes with rounded corners, and if … Read more

The World Wide Web Consortium has reached an important point in the long journey to standardize HTML5, the next version of the Hypertext Markup Language used to describe Web pages.

HTML5 officially reached "last call" status this week, which means the W3C believes it's got a version of the specification mature enough for organizations to decide whether to express support. But changes still could come: "In practice, last call announcements generate comments that sometimes result in substantive changes to a document," the W3C said in announcing that HTML5 reached last call.

Hypertext Markup Language is … Read more

The World Wide Web Consortium announced 35 new members, a move it says signals growing interest in HTML and other Web technologies it standardizes.

Among the new members are: China Unicom, Comcast, Facebook, LG Electronics, NEC Corporation, Netflix, SanDisk, Sony, and Zynga.

This "more diverse community at W3C" will help bring Web standards to industries including mobile devices, television, publishing, and advertising, W3C CEO Jeff Jaffe said in a statement. "The immediate impact of new Web standards will result in more innovation, more powerful Web-based products and services, and economic opportunities for businesses and consumers alike." … Read more

The World Wide Web Consortium is to develop standards to enable direct peer-to-peer communications between browsers, without the need to go through centralized servers.

The standards could make it more difficult for repressive government action against Web communications, according to members of the W3C working group assigned to develop the standards. The group aims to define APIs that will let browsers communicate using audio, video, and "supplementary" real-time communications, the W3C said yesterday.

"W3C today launched a new Web Real-Time Communications Working Group to define client-side APIs to enable real-time communications in Web browsers," the W3C … Read more