Overview of W3C Activities

Vincent Quint, W3C / INRIA

Why is W3C here?

To realize the full potential of the Web

• Achieving standards
• Planning evolution
• Facilitating, convening

Membership

115 members in January (now 133)

• 53 full members: large companies
  • North America: 24
  • Europe: 22
  • Asia: 7
• 62 affiliate members: universities, research labs, SME
  • North America: 33
  • Europe: 23
  • Asia: 6

Membership

Membership by industry segment

• Hardware and software: 58
• Communications and networking: 16
• Content providers: 7
• Users: 12
• University and research labs: 22

Member Involvement

• Influence policy, priorities
• Involve staff in leading edge decisions
• Make needs known
• Flag new issues
• Understand future directions

W3C

Hosted by

• the Laboratory for Computer Science at MIT (12)
• INRIA (12)

Funded by

• Full members and affiliate members

• Seed funding by DARPA and the European Union

W3C server provides information about W3C activity: http://www.w3.org

W3C Roles

• Tracking developments
• Convening workshops
• Establishing working groups
• Writing and editing specifications
• Developing and distributing reference code

according to the needs of each area.

W3C Process

• Workshop
• Working group
• Editorial Review Board
• Working Draft
• Contribution to IETF

Workshops: Goals

• To establish a new area
• To define requirements
• To find possible next steps
• To find resources within membership
• To charter working groups

Workshops: Pragmatics

• Open to W3C members + invited experts
• Often require position statement
• One or two days
• Presentations, brainstorming, discussion

Working Groups

• Solve a given problem
• Typically, produce specifications
• Focussed, compared with Workshop
• Generally W3C members only

Editorial Review Boards

• Small closed groups
• Composed from W3C members
• Act as editor for specifications

W3C Reference Code

• Portable, modular
• Not fast, memory efficient
• Server, Client, Code Library
• Demo, example, or reusable according to need

Technical Areas

The rest of this talk

1. User interface & data formats
2. Society and Web Protocols
3. Web Architecture
4. Collaborative Web

User Interfaces & Data formats

• HTML, SGML
• Style Sheets
• Internationalization
  • Character sets, fonts
  • L2R/R2L and other typography
• Graphics and 3D
  • PNG, VRML

Society and Web Protocols

• Security
• Payment: JEPI
• Content labelling: PICS
• Demographics
  • knowing readership vs privacy

Web Architecture

Evolution of the underlying model

• HTTP-NG

  faster, better defined asynchronous HTTP

• Replication & caching
• OOP on WWW
• Mobile Code
• Addressing: URI, URN

Collaborative Web

Groups from W3C Workshop:

• Knowledge Representation
• Links as 1st class objects
• Notification protocol
• Annotation protocols

Mainly impacts architecture

Future Activities

• Special protocols for low bandwidth and disconnected operation
• Integration of real time channels
• HTTP enhancements in other areas