World Wide Web Consortium

The World Wide Web Consortium ( W3C short ) is the forum for the standardization of the World Wide Web relevant techniques. It was founded on 1 October 1994 at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science in Cambridge (Massachusetts ). The W3C is a membership organization.

Founder and chairman of the W3C, Tim Berners- Lee, who is also known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. The W3C develops technical specifications and guidelines through a mature, transparent process to achieve maximum consensus on the content of a technical protocol, high technical and editorial quality and approved by the W3C and his followers.

Since January 2011, the seat of the German - Austrian offices in Berlin is the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence ( DFKI).

Examples of standardized by the W3C technologies are HTML, XHTML, XML, RDF, OWL, CSS, SVG and WCAG.

History

The history of the W3C is closely associated with the development of the WWW. Founder Tim Berners -Lee was aware that the inconsistent use of technologies URI, HTTP and HTML could lead to making links inactive and thus the WWW useless. That's why he wanted to standardize the specifications to these technologies by the Internet Engineering Task Force ( IETF).

After an IETF meeting in 1992 in Boston, a WWW -specific working group, however, was able to publish any useful standards founded. At the same time, more and more web browsers were developed, which Berners- Lee has intensified the corporation, which controls the evolution of the Web, was thinking. This should also prevent the Web into different Teilwebs - with either commercial or academic orientation - divided and instead retains its universal character.

The W3C was then not at CERN - the origin of the WWWS - but with whose cooperation the LCS | founded MIT ( Meanwhile in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, CSAIL short, renamed). Furthermore, supporting the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Project Agency ( DARPA ) and the European Commission the project. The W3C should take place from the beginning to the lowest common denominator of a technology and this process to a specification, so that it is supported by all member organizations. To emphasize the international nature of the WWW, should be added next to the MIT additional hosts on different continents.

The Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique ( INRIA ) was replaced in April 1995, the European host of W3C, but by 2003, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics ( ERCIM ). The Keio University ( Japan) was Asian in 1996 host organization. In addition, distributed worldwide support offices, known as offices, the activities of the W3C.

Organization

Working for the W3C 50-60 persons in charge of the organizational processes and are mostly employed in one of the three host organizations. In addition, the W3C is supported by its member organizations. 400 organizations are currently a member of the W3C. Then there are the many volunteers and helpers who participate in the discussion processes of mailing lists, compile recommendations, write implementations of specifications and publish it as open source, to participate in working groups or engage up elsewhere in the W3C.

The W3C is funded by the contributions of the member organizations and voluntary donations. Only at the end of 2009 confirmed the Internet Society ( ISOC) - an umbrella organization of the IETF - an amount of 2.5 million U.S. dollars, spread over the next three years to donate to the W3C.

In addition to the three host organizations MIT, ERCIM and Keio University, dedicated to administrative activities, distributed offices complement the work of the W3C's world. These have to wake one hand, awareness of standards and the W3C mission and on the other hand:

  • To address stakeholders and to promote the relationship to regional politics and economy
  • To support regional W3C Members
  • To provide feedback about the - the region in question - themes
  • To promote the regional acceptance of W3C standards, with particular regard to region-specific cultural objects
  • Dissemination of translations of W3C Recommendations

The regional office used it several communication options, such as a website, newsletters, brochures and conferences. Hosted the offices of economic neutrals member organizations of the W3C (hence most universities or research institutions ).

Membership

Any kind of organization - be it business enterprise, governmental or non- governmental organization, university or research institution - can join the W3C. The membership fee to be paid is based on the shape and the country of origin of the potential participant. The entire organization counts as an independent member, it can therefore no subsidiaries are separate member of the W3C. This can lead to loss of members, such as when companies merge.

On the homepage of the W3C is a tool that calculates the contribution to be paid annually on the basis of the nature and origin of the organization automatically.

Employees of each organization will participate in the working groups, in which recommendations are developed. In addition, each member has the right to a seat on the Committee advised of the W3C and the right to submit proposals to intervene actively in the development processes related to the W3C.

Status

Although the W3C has created many de facto standards, the W3C is no interstate recognized organization and thus precisely taken not entitled, for example, set the ISO standards. (However, form W3C standards such as XML, the base of some ISO standards ).

The W3C calls his standards - in order to meet their non- official character - W3C Recommendations, ie W3C recommendations. In order to improve the cooperation with international standardization bodies such as the ISO, the W3C is working to harness transposition processes such as PAS or Fast Track to ensure that the recommendations get faster the status of international standards.

In its development, the W3C has itself to be obliged to use only technologies whose use - is free from patent fees - as part of the implementation of a W3C Recommendation. Details can be found in patent policy of the W3C.

Development

The precursors in the process of developing a W3C Recommendation (W3C Recommendation) are working draft ( Working Draft ), last call ( Last Call Working Draft ), Recommendation candidate ( Candidate Recommendation ) and the proposed recommendation ( Proposed Recommendation ). To a recommendation corrections continue to be published, and it may be a new edition will be issued a Recommendation ( for example, the XML recommendation currently exists in the fifth edition ). If necessary, recommendations can also be withdrawn for revision.

Furthermore, it is possible to downgrade the precursors of the recommendations on the level of the working draft. The W3C also published in Notes ( Notes ) without normative claim.

The recommendations must not be regarded as teaching materials for the W3C technologies. Create instead is a kind of instruction that allows a technology to implement standardized. Accordingly, these documents for laymen are often - because of the very own language - difficult to understand or revealing. For users at the application level, who want to deal with W3C technologies deeper, a special tutorial is recommended. These may also serve the aforementioned annotations ( notes), because they tend to correspond with their explorative character a tutorial.

Unlike, for example, in the Request for Comments (RFC ) of the IETF, the W3C are all documents - from the first working draft to the final recommendation - available after the standardization process online. Furthermore, the Standardisierungsweg can be easily understood within a document on the basis of various links. Rights owner of all documents, including the final recommendations, there are always the host: MIT, ERCIM and Keio University. In the following, the individual steps are described in the development process to a recommendation. The development process up to a recommendation is also documented on the pages of the W3C.

  • Working Draft and Last Call Working Draft

The working draft ( Working Draft ) is the first stage in the standardization process of a W3C Recommendation. It is available to the public, the W3C Membership and other interested organizations for comments. Usually several working drafts are developed, this is achieved, however, not everyone up to the recommendation. The Last Call Working Draft ( German last call ) is intended here to indicate that this is the last scheduled working draft.

  • Candidate Recommendation

The recommendation candidate ( Candidate Recommendation ) includes the actual work from the document is mostly, that is, that the attending working group has all the technical requirements integrated into the document. In this state are already implementations of the technology possible and also required the experience gained in the implementations included in other documents.

  • Proposed Recommendation

The proposed recommendation ( Proposed Recommendation ) is a supplemented by the first implementations of the document and also the last stage in the development process for the recommendation. The proposal will be sent to the Advisory Committee of the W3C. After approval of the members and the Chairman, he achieved the status of a Recommendation.

Recommendations

These recommendations have been or are being developed by the World Wide Web Consortium:

  • Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)
  • Extensible Hypertext Markup Language ( XHTML)
  • Extensible Markup Language (XML)
  • Extensible MultiModal Annotation markup language ( EMMA )
  • XML Schema (XML Schema)
  • Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL)
  • XSL Transformation ( XSLT)
  • Cascading Style Sheets ( CSS)
  • Portable Network Graphics ( PNG) is version 1.2, an ISO standard
  • Scalable Vector Graphics ( SVG)
  • XML Path Language (XPath )
  • XML Powered Web Forms ( XForms )
  • XML Link Language ( XLink )
  • XML Pointer Language ( XPointer )
  • XML Query Language ( XQuery)
  • Voice XML ( VoiceXML )
  • XProc: An XML Pipeline Language

All recommendations and working drafts are called via the W3C website.

Criticism

In the c't issue 1/2007 the journalist Herbert Brown holds a "crisis of the W3C " due to " foreign practice and years of abducted standards " together.

He shall in particular on the role of the standard HTML, the language scope has not been extended since December 1997. The recommendations to XHTML can not solve these problems, as indeed Version1 provides stricter rules, but no new features. XHTML2 other hand, was too complex and not backwards compatible.

Furthermore, the standardization processes have become more complex at the W3C, which processes slow down. Håkon Wium Lie - CTO of Opera Software - are in the interview to the article the following opinion again:

"Second, W3C Has evolved so. In the early days, turning a working draft into a recommendation that a simple month -long stint as Proposed Recommendation. These days, you have to issue call for comments, answer all the comments, make sure there are two Implementations, and so forth. The formal process Has become much longer and only specifications thathave serious backers end up as Recommendations. "

" On the other hand, the W3C has developed. In the old days it was a matter of a few months to make a working draft of a recommendation. Today, we must call for comments, answer all these comments, make sure that there are two implementations, and so on. The formal process takes much longer and only specifications with serious advocate make it to the recommendation. "

The article also addresses the organizational structure itself, by the dominance and influence of large wireless and software company is criticized.

Cambridge (Massachusetts) Semantic MediaWiki WS-Addressing Canonical XML W3C Geolocation API Internationalization Tag Set RDF-Schema Semantic Interpretation for Speech Recognition Simple Knowledge Organization System Speech Recognition Grammar Specification Speech Synthesis Markup Language SPARQL Timed Text XInclude XML Base XML-Encryption XML Events Call Control eXtensible Markup Language CURIE HTML5 InkML Rule Interchange Format SMIL Timesheets SXBL Extensible Forms Description Language XFrames XAdES Extensible User Interface Protocol W3C Markup Validation Service Web Accessibility Initiative Integrated Authority File
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