W3C Invites Implementations of CSS Values and Units Module Level 3; CSS Scroll Snap Module Level 1

The CSS Working Group invites implementations of two Candidate Recommendations published today:

• CSS Values and Units Module Level 3, which module describes the common values and units that CSS properties accept and the syntax used for describing them in CSS property definitions.
• CSS Scroll Snap Module Level 1, which module contains features to control panning and scrolling behavior with “snap positions”.

CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, in speech, etc.

by Coralie Mercier via W3C News

Call for Review: Web Authentication: An API for accessing Public Key Credentials Level 1 is a W3C Proposed Recommendation

The Web Authentication Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of Web Authentication: An API for accessing Public Key Credentials Level 1. This specification defines an API enabling the creation and use of strong, attested, scoped, public key-based credentials by web applications, for the purpose of strongly authenticating users. Conceptually, one or more public key credentials, each scoped to a given WebAuthn Relying Party, are created by and bound to authenticators as requested by the web application. The user agent mediates access to authenticators and their public key credentials in order to preserve user privacy. Authenticators are responsible for ensuring that no operation is performed without user consent. Authenticators provide cryptographic proof of their properties to Relying Parties via attestation. This specification also describes the functional model for WebAuthn conformant authenticators, including their signature and attestation functionality.

Comments are welcome through 14 February 2019.

by Xueyuan Jia via W3C News

Call for Review: User Timing Level 2 is a W3C Proposed Recommendation

The Web Performance Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of User Timing Level 2. This specification defines an interface to help web developers measure the performance of their applications by giving them access to high precision timestamps.

Comments are welcome through 7 February 2019.

by Xueyuan Jia via W3C News

W3C Advisory Committee Elects Technical Architecture Group

The W3C Advisory Committee has elected the following people to the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG): Alice Boxhall (Google), Sangwhan Moon (Odd Concepts) and Theresa O’Connor (Apple). They join co-Chair Tim Berners-Lee and continuing participants, Daniel Appelquist (Samsung Electronics; co-Chair), David Baron (Mozilla Foundation), Hadley Beeman (W3C Invited Expert), Kenneth Rohde Christiansen (Intel Corporation), Peter Linss (W3C Invited Expert; co-Chair), and Lukasz Olejnik (W3C Invited Expert). Yves Lafon continues as staff contact. Many thanks to Travis Leithead (Microsoft) and Alex Russell (Google), whose terms end at the end of this month.

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. The elected Members of the TAG participate as individual contributors and not representatives of their organizations. TAG participants use their best judgment to find the best solutions for the Web, not just for any particular network, technology, vendor, or user. Learn more about the TAG.

by Xueyuan Jia via W3C News

New version of the Roadmap of Web Applications on Mobile

W3C has published a new version of its Roadmap of Web Applications on Mobile, an overview of the various technologies developed in W3C that increase the capabilities of Web applications, and how they apply more specifically to the mobile context.

The contents of the roadmap have been updated to follow the evolution of the Web platform since July 2018. See the Change history for details. This new version highlights exploratory work recently started in the Web Platform Incubator Community Group (WICG) to close the gap with native:

• Autoplay Policy, described in Media
• Background Fetch, described in Application Lifecycle and Network and Communications
• Badging API, described in Application Lifecycle and User Interaction
• Display Locking, described in Performance and Tuning
• Portals, described in Application Lifecycle
• Scroll-linked Animations, described in Graphics and Layout
• WebHID, described in in User Interaction
• Writable Files, described in Data Storage

Browser support for some of the specifications mentioned in the roadmap has improved since publication of the latest version of the roadmap in July 2018. For instance, Media Queries Level 4, described in Device Adaptation is now supported by all main browsers. Picture-in-Picture is now also supported in Firefox mobile, and has experimental support in Safari (see Media).

Sponsored by Beihang University, this project is part of a set of roadmaps under development in a GitHub repository to document existing standards, highlight ongoing standardization efforts, point out topics under incubation, and discuss technical gaps that may need to be addressed in the future. New versions will be published on a quarterly basis, or as needed depending on progress of key technologies of the Web platform. We encourage the community to review them and raise comments, or suggest new ones, in the repository’s issue tracker.

by Xueyuan Jia via W3C News

Happy holidays from W3C!

For all we will accomplish together in 2019
and for all you have done to lead the Web to its full potential in 2018,
thank you!

The W3C wishes you a happy holiday season.

by Coralie Mercier via W3C News

Accessible Name and Description Computation 1.1 is a W3C Recommendation

The Accessible Rich Internet Applications Working Group has published Accessible Name and Description Computation 1.1 (Accname) as a W3C Recommendation. Accname describes how user agents determine the names and descriptions of accessible objects from web content languages. The name is a simple label for the object, and the description provides additional information. These are both standard features of accessibility APIs, which allow assistive technologies to identify these objects and present their names or descriptions to users. Documenting the algorithm through which names and descriptions are to be determined promotes interoperable exposure of these properties among different accessibility APIs and helps to ensure that this information appears in a manner consistent with author intent. Separate accessibility API mapping (AAM) specifications define the actual way these features are exposed to accessibility APIs; Accname just describes how the name and description are computed using a variety of content features that may be present at the same time. Read about the Accessible Rich Internet Applications Working Group and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

by Xueyuan Jia via W3C News