World Wide Web Consortium Recommendations for the Web By Charlie Thompson Jeff Schroeder and Romney Bake Introduction W3C who is it where did it come from and what does it do How does it develop its recommendations Why do people listen to them History of W3C Tim Burners Lee Oxford University England 1976 Two years with Plessey Telecommunications Ltd transaction systems message relays and bar code technology 1989 World Wide Web 3Com Founders chair Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab MIT Directs W3C Author of Weaving the Web Facts 1994 Tim Berners Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium W3C at MIT April 1995 INRIA became the first European W3C host Followed by Keio University of Japan in Asia in 1996 2003 ERCIM took over the role of European W3C Host from INRIA December 2004 in Boston MA and in June 2005 in France W3C celebrated its 10th anniversary with symposia about the history and future of the Web and W3C Achievements Over Time Oct 1996 First W3C Recommendation published is Portable Network Graphics Dec 1996 Separating content from structure CSS Level 1 is published Dec 1997 HTML 4 0 adds tables scripting style sheets internationalization and accessibility features to Web publishing Aug 2000 Scalable Vector Graphics SVG 1 0 enriches Web graphics May 2003 W3C adopts royalty free Patent Policy Achievements Continued March 2004 W3C gives voice to the Web with VoiceXML 2 0 Feb 2005 Character Model brings unified approach to using characters on the Web May 2005 Mobile Web Initiative launched to facilitate mobile Web access W3C Process Document Describes Organizational Structure How W3C Functions Does not describe Public interactivity W3C Team internal workings Process Overview Working Draft WD Last Call Working Draft Candidate Recommendation CR Proposed Recommendation PR W3C Recommendation Notes Receive the attention of W3C personnel yet have no official standing Notes from a number of sources Working Groups in Trial Phase W3C Member Organizations W3C Staff Working Draft Published every 3 months Attains Last Call status when near completion Candidate Recommendation Final Draft Submitted to developers for Testing Implementation Special Circumstances Proposed Recommendation Revised Final Draft Working Group Members cast ballots on their acceptance or revision Recommendation Voted in Considered stable Structure Director Members Advisory Committee Team Advisory Board Technical Architecture Group Working Groups Working Groups Do most of standards development Document development process Focus Degree of membership disclosure Consensus CSS Short for Cascading Style Sheets a feature added to HTML that gives both Web site developers and users more control over how pages are displayed With CSS designers and users can create style sheets that define how different elements such as headers and links appear These Style Sheets can then be applied to any Web page PNG Portable Network Graphics A file format for bitmapped graphic images approved by the World Wide Web Consortium as a replacement for GIF files GIF files use a patented data compression algorithm PNG is patent and license free RDF A set of rules a sort of language for creating descriptions of information especially information available on the World Wide Web RDF could be used to describe a collection of books or artists or a collection of web pages as in the RSS data format which uses RDF to create machine readable summaries of web sites XML Extensible Markup Language is a W3C initiative that allows information and services to be encoded with meaningful structure and semantics that computers and humans can understand XML is great for information exchange and can easily be extended to include userspecified and industry specified tags Why Should We Listen to the W3C Recommendations Here are just a few reasons Adobe Systems Inc America Online Inc Apple Computer Inc AT T The Boeing Company British Broadcasting Corporation Canon Inc Cisco Systems Daimler Chrysler Research and Technology Google Inc HP Hitachi Ltd IBM Corporation Macromedia Microsoft Corporation Mozilla Foundation Nokia Novell Inc Opera Software Oracle Software SEMANTIC SYSTEMS S A Sun Microsystems Inc Walt Disney Internet Group Yahoo Inc But why do they listen to the W3C Because a standards body is the only way to keep internet technologies from being fragmented It is better for customers and users of the internet Because they are members But why do they want to members Communication project management accounting advertising and security Web technologies are the very heart of many organizations Companies need that part of their organization to be stable and want to have a say in how it evolves Why not the IETF When Tim Berners Lee took HTML to the IETF it didn t work out The IETF has traditionally been for lower middle ware Its method for standards is thorough but not very efficient Practical for critical low level standards but not for upper level standards