web standards

W3C buttons down HTML5, opens up HTML5.1

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) today took two significant steps down its double-track path toward standardizing HTML, the core language of the Web.

First, it released a "candidate recommendation" of Hypertext Markup Language 5, which means HTML5 is settling down in the eyes of the standards group. Second, it released a first draft of HTML5.1, a smaller set of changes it's developing simultaneously.

"CR [candidate recommendation] is the stable branch into which only bug fixes go, [and] 5.1 is the new line for improvements," said Robin Berjon, one of the five newly appointed HTML5 editors. … Read more

Privacy professor to try to break Do Not Track logjam

Peter Swire, an Ohio State law professor and privacy expert who has worked with the Obama administration, is stepping into a contentious process to create a standard way to let people stop Web sites from tracking their online behavior.

Aleecia M. McDonald announced today she's stepping down as co-chair of the Do Not Track standardization effort at the World Wide Web Consortium. She previously worked for Firefox maker Mozilla, which launched the current DNT technology after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission sought a mechanism to block online tracking, but she currently works for a program within Stanford University'… Read more

Web standards vet marches Microsoft to the front lines (Q&A)

You might think developing technology standards is plodding, bureaucratic tedium compared to something like the frenzy of smartphone innovation.

But you'd be wrong, at least in the case of Paul Cotton, who leads Microsoft's involvement in the important and often fractious world of Web standards. Web standards are hot -- and hotly contested.

Cotton, an even-keeled Canadian, discovered a passion for standards more than 20 years ago when figuring out how to digitize airplane maintenance manuals. He's comfortable with the contradictory motives of standards groups: fierce competition one moment and gentlemanly cooperation the next.

It's a … Read more

Hey, Web developers! Here's a one-stop shop for your app needs

Enough with having separate Web programming tutorials from Google, Apple, Opera, Mozilla, and Microsoft.

These five major browser makers, along with Facebook, Adobe Systems, Nokia, and Hewlett Packard, have become stewards of a new effort to centralize developer resources at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This Web Platform Docs project will include not just help on to use a bewildering array of new Web technologies, but also will detail which ones are accepted standards, how well the various tools work across multiple browsers, and how stable the standards are.

"A key part of this project is that it … Read more

HTML5 is dead. Long live HTML5!

HTML5 fans got a very large splash of very cold water in their faces yesterday.

Facebook has been a big fan of building mobile apps using HTML5 and related Web standards, but no less than founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg called Facebook's HTML5 app "one of the biggest mistakes if not the biggest strategic mistake that we made."

Those are powerfully damning words, and many developers will likely take them to heart given Facebook's cred in the programming world.

But there are subtleties here -- not an easy thing for those who see the world … Read more

Apache Web software overrides IE10 do-not-track setting

Apache, the most commonly used software to house Web sites, will ignore Microsoft's decision to disable ad-tracking technology by default in Internet Explorer 10.

Microsoft set IE10 and Windows 8 so that, by default, Web sites that observe the Do Not Track (DNT) standard won't track people's behavior. The move was made to "better protect user privacy," the company said.

But protecting user privacy turns out to be a thorny matter in practice -- at least when a standard has to be palatable to advertisers as well as browser makers and people surfing the Web. … Read more

Google's SPDY wins new allies in plan to rebuild Web plumbing

SPDY, a Google project to try to speed up the Web, is gaining new allies interested in using it as a basis for rebuilding a fundamental Internet technolog that's remained largely unchanged since 1999.

SPDY reworks HTTP, the Hypertext Transfer Protocol by which Web browsers request Web pages and by which Web servers deliver those pages over the Internet. Every time you load a Web page, you use HTTP or its securely encrypted sibling, HTTPS. An upgrade would bring improvements to a vast number of people -- but on the flip side, making changes to something so basic and … Read more

Mozilla's browser OS gets partners and a name: Firefox OS

Mozilla's browser-based smartphone operating system has grown up a notch, winning over partners such as Sprint and ZTE and picking up the marketing-friendly name of Firefox OS.

In addition, Mozilla has announced several partners, a necessity for making a bunch of software into something people actually use: only a very small number of people have the skills and interest to install a mobile-phone OS.

Carrier Telefonica and chipmaker Qualcomm already were partners that emerged when Mozilla announced B2G at Mobile World Congress earlier this year. They'd said to expect phones by the end of 2012 then, but now … Read more

Adobe: Web standards match 80 percent of Flash features

SAN FRANCISCO--Adobe Systems, retooling as fast as it can for a future of Web publishing and Web apps, sees the technology as mostly caught up to the Flash technology that Adobe previously preferred.

"I think it's close to 80 percent," Arno Gourdol, Adobe's senior director of Web platform and authoring, said in an interview during the Google I/O show here.

Gourdol, who leads Adobe work to embrace Web standards, has a lot on the line as the company tries to make a difficult transition away from the widely used but fading Flash. He's eager … Read more

Adobe ships CS6 software; Creative Cloud imminent

Adobe Systems today began selling Creative Suite 6, its mammoth but expensive collection of software for designers, artists, photographers, videographers, publishers, and others in the "content creation" business.

The software is available in the $2,599 Master Collection, the smaller $1,899 Design and Web Premium or Production Premium collections, or the yet-smaller $1,299 Design Standard collection. About three quarters of Adobe's unit shipments today are in these collections, but individual packages are available, too, such as Photoshop CS6 for $699 in its standard version or Illustrator CS6 for $599.

With CS6, Adobe tried to mix … Read more