Welcome to the January 2008 newsletter from the Australian W3C Office. Your link to the latest Consortium news and events... 1. Events 2. W3C Publishes HTML 5 Draft, Future of Web Content 3. SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System Reference (First Public Working Draft) 4. Relationship Between Mobile Web and Web Content Accessibility (First Public Working Draft) 5. W3C Invites Implementations of SMIL 3.0 (Candidate Recommendation) 6. Service Modeling Language 1.1 Drafts 7. SPARQL Standard Opens Data on the Web 8. W3C Welcomes Review of Three OWL 1.1 First Public Drafts 9. XHTML Access Module; Comments Welcome 10.Last Call: SMIL Timesheets 1.0 11.Document Object Model Activity Closed 12.W3C Advisory Committee Elects TAG Participants 1. Events - AusWeb08 5th-9th April 2008 The 14th Australasian World Wide Conference will be held at the Ballina Beach Resort, 5th-9th April 2008. We seek contributions via way of refereed papers, posters and short edited papers as well as suggestions for workshops, tutorials and special interest group sessions. AusWeb is the longest running regional Web conference in the world and seeks to provide reporting of research and projects and create discussion about all aspects of the Web development and Web applications. Conference Web site http://ausweb.scu.edu.au Call for submissions http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/aw08/papers/ - Writing for the Web Workshop Canberra - 12 February 2008 Melbourne - 26 February 2008 Vision Australia is partnering with respected usability and accessibility expert Dey Alexander to offer a unique Writing for the Web workshop. Dey is co-convenor of the Web Accessibility Network of Australian Universities and is a regular presenter on useable and accessible web writing to the education, corporate and government sectors. Focusing on excellent content writing, this practical workshop complements the Vision Australia Web Accessibility Workshops. Further information is at: Canberra: http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/info.aspx?page=1653&event=64 Melbourne: http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/info.aspx?page=1653&event=108 - Web Accessibility Benefits and Issues Melbourne - 20 February 2008 (afternoon) Canberra - 6 March 2008 (afternoon) This half-day workshop run by Vision Australia is targeted at policy makers, business managers and corporate communications or web development professionals who want an overview of why web accessibility is important. No knowledge of HTML or other web technologies is needed. This workshop provides an introduction to Web Accessibility. The focus is on how web accessibility can benefit organisations and their website users. A range of simulations are used to demonstrate how people with disabilities use the web. The workshop introduces the World Wide Web Consortium's Content Accessibility Guidelines and their implementation. Further information is at: Melbourne: http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/info.aspx?page=1653&event=53 Canberra: http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/info.aspx?page=1653&event=63 - Web Accessibility Techniques Workshops Melbourne - 21 February 2008 Canberra - 7 March 2008 This full-day workshop run by Vision Australia is targeted at web-development team leaders, corporate communications professionals along with content authors, web programmers and designers and web contract managers. A basic knowledge of HTML is helpful. This workshop provides a thorough overview of accessibility issues and the techniques used to address them. It covers the World Wide Web Consortium's Content Accessibility Guidelines and their implementation. Further information is at: Melbourne: http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/info.aspx?page=1653&event=112 Canberra: http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/info.aspx?page=1653&event=117 2. W3C Publishes HTML 5 Draft, Future of Web Content W3C today published an early draft of "HTML 5," a major revision of the markup language for the Web. The HTML Working Group is creating HTML 5 to be the open, royalty-free specification for rich Web content and Web applications. "HTML is of course a very important standard," said Tim Berners-Lee, author of the first version of HTML and W3C Director. "I am glad to see that the community of developers, including browser vendors, is working together to create the best possible path for the Web." New features include APIs for drawing two-dimensional graphics and ways to embed and control audio and video content. HTML 5 helps to improve interoperability and reduce software costs by giving precise rules not only about how to handle all correct HTML documents but also how to recover from errors. Discover other "new features," read the press release, and learn more about the future of HTML. http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-html5-20080122/ http://www.w3.org/html/wg/ http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-html5-diff-20080122/#new-elements http://www.w3.org/2008/02/html5-pressrelease http://www.w3.org/html/ 3. SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System Reference (First Public Working Draft) The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of "SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System Reference." This document defines the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS), a common data model for sharing and linking knowledge organization systems via the Semantic Web. SKOS provides a standard, low-cost means to describe the semantic relationships between existing knowledge systems and to port those systems to the Semantic Web. SKOS also provides a lightweight, intuitive language for developing and sharing new knowledge organization systems. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. http://www.w3.org/2006/07/SWD/ http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-skos-reference-20080125/ http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/ 4. Relationship Between Mobile Web and Web Content Accessibility (First Public Working Draft) The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group and the WAI Education and Outreach Working Group have published the First Public Working Draft of "Relationship Between Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines." See the announcement email. The groups encourage people to start by reading Web Content Accessibility and Mobile Web: Making a Web Site Accessible Both for People with Disabilities and for Mobile Devices, which shows how design goals for accessibility and mobile access overlap. A third document, Experiences Shared by People with Disabilities and by People Using Mobile Devices, provides examples of barriers that people (without disabilities) face when interacting with Web content via mobile devices, and similar barriers for people with disabilities using desktop computers. Learn more about the Mobile Web Initiative and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). http://www.w3.org/2005/MWI/BPWG/ http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/ http://www.w3.org/TR/mwbp-wcag/ http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2008JanMar/0014 http://www.w3.org/WAI/mobile/ http://www.w3.org/WAI/mobile/experiences http://www.w3.org/Mobile/ http://www.w3.org/WAI/ 5. W3C Invites Implementations of SMIL 3.0 (Candidate Recommendation) The SYMM Working Group has published the Candidate Recommendation of "Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL 3.0)," an XML-based language that allows authors to create interactive multimedia presentations. Using SMIL 3.0, an author can describe the temporal behavior of a multimedia presentation, associate hyperlinks with media objects and describe the layout of the presentation on a screen. The Working Group is building a test suite help ensure interoperable implementation. Learn more about W3C work on Synchronized Multimedia http://www.w3.org/AudioVideo/ http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/CR-SMIL3-20080115/ http://www.w3.org/2007/SMIL30/testsuite/ http://www.w3.org/AudioVideo/ 6. Service Modeling Language 1.1 Drafts The Service Modeling Language (SML) Working Group has published the third Working Drafts of "Service Modeling Language, Version 1.1" and "Service Modeling Language Interchange Format Version 1.1." The former defines the SML 1.1, intended to model complex services and systems, including their structure, constraints, policies, and best practices. The latter defines the SML 1.1 interchange format, designed to ensure accurate and convenient interchange of the documents that make up an SML model. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. http://www.w3.org/XML/SML/ http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-sml-20080114/ http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-sml-if-20080114/ http://www.w3.org/XML/ 7. SPARQL Standard Opens Data on the Web Today, the World Wide Web Consortium made it easier to share and reuse data across application, enterprise, and community boundaries with the publication of three new Semantic Web standards for "SPARQL" (pronounced "sparkle"). SPARQL is the query language for the Semantic Web (see Semantic Web use cases). SPARQL queries hide the details of data management, which lowers costs and increases robustness of data integration on the Web. "Trying to use the Semantic Web without SPARQL is like trying to use a relational database without SQL," explained Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director. There are already 14 implementations of the standard, which is comprised of three W3C Recommendations: "SPARQL Query Language for RDF," "SPARQL Protocol for RDF," and "SPARQL Query Results XML Format." Read the press release, testimonials and learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-query/ http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/sweo/public/UseCases/ http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/DataAccess/impl-report-ql http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-query/ http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-protocol/ http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-XMLres/ http://www.w3.org/2007/12/sparql-pressrelease http://www.w3.org/2007/12/sparql-testimonial http://www.w3.org/2001/sw 8. W3C Welcomes Review of Three OWL 1.1 First Public Drafts The OWL Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of three Web Ontology Language (OWL) 1.1 specifications: "Structural Specification and Functional-Style Syntax," "Model-Theoretic Semantics," and "Mapping to RDF Graphs." OWL is used to define Semantic Web vocabularies. Together, these new specifications extend the W3C "OWL Web Ontology Language 1.0" with a small but useful set of features that have been requested by users, for which effective reasoning algorithms are now available, and that OWL tool developers are willing to support. The three specifications cover, respectively, the syntax, semantics, and mapping to RDF of OWL 1.1 ontologies. Learn more about the W3C Semantic Web Activity. http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/ http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-owl11-syntax-20080108/ http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-owl11-semantics-20080108/ http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-owl11-mapping-to-rdf-20080108/ http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/ http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/ http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/ 9. XHTML Access Module; Comments Welcome The XHTML2 Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of XHTML Access Module. This document is intended to help make XHTML-family markup languages more effective at supporting the needs of the accessibility community. It does so by providing a generic mechanism for defining the relationship between document components and well-known accessibility taxonomies. Learn more about the HTML Activity. http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/ http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/2008/WD-xhtml-access-20080107/ http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Activity 10.Last Call: SMIL Timesheets 1.0 The SYMM Working Group has published the Last Call Working Draft of "SMIL Timesheets 1.0" ; this is also the First Public Working Draft. This document defines an XML timing language that makes SMIL 3.0 element and attribute timing control available to a wide range of other XML languages. This language allows SMIL timing to be integrated into a wide variety of a-temporal languages, even when several such languages are combined in a compound document. Because of its similarity with external style and positioning descriptions in the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) language, this functionality has been termed SMIL Timesheets. Comments are welcome through 15 February. Learn more about W3C work on Synchronized Multimedia. http://www.w3.org/AudioVideo/ http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-timesheets-20080110/ http://www.w3.org/AudioVideo/ 11.Document Object Model Activity Closed W3C's Document Object Model (DOM) Activity is now closed. The Document Object Model Working Group closed in the early 2004 after the completion of the DOM Level 3 Recommendations. Since then, several W3C Working Groups have taken the lead in maintaining and continuing to develop standard APIs for the Web; these include the HTML, SVG, CSS, and WebAPI Working Groups. W3C will continue to develop APIs in various Working Groups. Learn more about achievements of those participating as part of the DOM Activity on the DOM Activity Statement. http://www.w3.org/DOM/ http://www.w3.org/DOM/Activity 12.W3C Advisory Committee Elects TAG Participants The W3C Advisory Committee has elected Ashok Malhotra (Oracle), T.V. Raman (Google), and Henry Thompson (University of Edinburgh) to the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG). Continuing TAG participants are Noah Mendelsohn (IBM), David Orchard (BEA), Jonathan Rees (Science Commons), Norm Walsh (Sun), and Stuart Williams (HP), who co-Chairs the TAG with Tim Berners-Lee. The mission of the TAG is to build consensus around principles of Web architecture and to interpret and clarify these principles when necessary, to resolve issues involving general Web architecture brought to the TAG, and to help coordinate cross-technology architecture developments inside and outside W3C. http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/ http://www.w3.org/2004/10/27-tag-charter.html#Mission ________________________________________________________________________ ____ For previous newsletters from the Australian W3C Office please visit http://w3c.org.au/newsletters/ If you are a W3C Member and would like to contribute relevant news please email us at w3c-australia@w3.org If you know of others who would like to receive this newsletter please direct them to http://w3.org.au ----------- Unsubscribe ----------- To unsubscribe send an email to w3c-news-request@w3c.org.au with the following command in the body of the email unsubscribe w3c-news your.email@address.org Replace the your.email@adddress.org with your real e-mail address. 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