WWW5: W3C activities

the two legs of the W3C:

the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is hosted by INRIA in europe and M.I.T in the U.S. currently, 12 people on each side of the pond are working for the consortium, the goal is 15 people in each location.

main goals:

the main goals of the W3C are:

• track development
• organize workshops to start new developments
• establish workgroups to process the output of the workshops
• define specifications for new features
• set up review boards to review the specifications
• write reference code to show the usefulness of new developments

technical activities:

currently, technical activities focus on the user interface and data formats. this includes:

• HTML
• style sheets
• internationalization
• graphics

the W3C is also concerned with the interaction between the society and the Web. this involves issues like:

• security
• payment
• content labeling
• legal problems
• privacy

also the architecture of the Web in general is a hot topic. HTTP-NG might be a means to improve the performance of the Web by introducing new technics such as asynchronous data transfer, data replication and caching. in addition, in the future links may be treated as objects and new protocols might be developed to support notification and annotation. special protocols for low bandwidth connection are under considerations and real time channels might be integrated into the Web.

back to WWW5 main document.