Developers and Browser Vendors to Shape HTML Future

Recognizing the importance of an open forum for the development of the predominant Web content technology, W3C invites browser vendors, application developers, and content designers to help design the next version of HTML by participating in the new W3C HTML Working Group. Based on significant input from the design and developer communities within and outside the W3C Membership, W3C has chartered the group to conduct its work in public and to solicit broad participation from W3C Members and non-Members alike.

W3C has published a report from the Workshop on the Mobile Web in Developing Countries, held in Bangalore, India in December 2006. Workshop participants discussed the needs and challenges facing people in developing economies who use a mobile phone as the primary and often sole platform for accessing the Web. Participants included mobile handset manufacturers, browser developers, software companies, local Indian companies and universities, and organizations working on information technology projects in rural communities in India and Africa. The report presents their findings and proposed next steps.

Link:
http://www.w3.org/2006/07/MWI-EC/exec_summary

The W3C Incubator Activity fosters rapid development, on a time scale of a year or less, of new Web-related concepts. Target concepts include innovative ideas for specifications, guidelines, and applications that are not (or not yet) clear candidates for development and more thorough scrutiny under the current W3C Recommendation Track.

Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director, testified on the future of the World Wide Web before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, Committee on Energy & Commerce, U.S. House of Representatives, on 1 March 2007. Chairman Edward Markey invited Berners-Lee as the sole witness for the first in a series on the Digital Future of the United States. Confronted with current U.S. policy questions, Tim Berners-Lee explained the success of the Web, described its three essential features: universality, open standards, and the separation of layers, and provided a view of its future.

Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director and inventor of the Web, opened the 3GSM World Congress - the world premier mobile industry event - with a keynote address at the Mobile Innovation Forum in Barcelona, Spain on Monday 12 February. Berners-Lee spoke on the role of innovation and openness in the Web's success, and how the W3C Mobile Web Initiative brings mobile telephony into convergence with the Web and aids in bridging the digital divide.