Call for Review: WOFF File Format 2.0 is a W3C Proposed Recommendation

11 January 2018

The WebFonts Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of WOFF File Format 2.0. Based on experience with WOFF 1.0, which is widely deployed, this specification was developed to provide improved compression and thus lower use of network bandwidth, while still allowing fast decompression even on mobile devices. This is achieved by combining a content-aware preprocessing step and improved entropy coding, compared to the Flate compression used in WOFF 1.0.

Comments are welcome through 11 February 2018.

Upcoming Workshop: Web5G: Aligning evolutions of network and Web technologies

10 January 2018

W3C announced today Web5G: Aligning evolutions of network and Web technologies Workshop, May 10-11 2018, in London, UK. The event is hosted by GSMA.

The primary goal of the workshop is to bring together telecommunications operators, network equipment providers, content delivery networks, browser vendors, and application developers to evaluate and prepare for the impact of 5G and other network-layer technologies on Web standards.

Expected topics of discussion include:

• Performance bottlenecks of Web apps on ultra-fast networks
• Dimensioning 5G Networks for supporting existing and future Web technologies (VR/AR, automotive, WebRTC, IoT)
• Architectural evolutions of the Web to enable greater network/application integration
• Connecting network management and network metrics from Web applications
• Case studies of existing network/application integration and their extension to the Web
• Features provided by new networking technologies and their applicability to Web applications
• Bringing edge-computing capabilities to Web applications
• Impact of integrating QUIC in the Web Platform

For more information on the workshop, please see the workshop details and submission instructions.

Registration is available online due by 30 March 2018.

W3C Advisory Committee elects Technical Architecture Group

8 January 2018

The W3C Advisory Committee has elected the following people to the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG): David Baron (Mozilla Foundation) and Lukasz Olejnik (W3C Invited Expert). They join co-Chair Tim Berners-Lee and continuing participants Hadley Beeman (W3C Invited Expert), Travis Leithead (Microsoft), Sangwhan Moon (Odd Concepts), Alex Russell (Google), Daniel Appelquist (Samsung Electronics; co-Chair), Peter Linss (W3C Invited Expert; co-Chair) –both re-appointed by the Director. Yves Lafon continues as staff contact. W3C thanks Andrew Betts (Fastly) whose term ends this month, for his contributions. 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. Learn more about the TAG.

Roadmap of Web Applications on Mobile

3 January 2018

W3C has published a 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.

Sponsored by Beihang University, this edition is a redesign of the Standards for Web Applications on Mobile: current state and roadmapdocument, published on a quarterly basis from 2011 to 2015. It documents existing standards, highlights ongoing standardization efforts, points out topics under incubation, and discusses technical gaps that may need to be addressed in the future. For instance, the document identifies ongoing work around Progressive Web Applications that allow to create a consistent and persistent lifecycle for applications on the Web platform.

New versions will be published on a quarterly basis, or as needed depending on progress of key technologies of the Web platform. The document is part of a set of roadmaps under development in a GitHub repository, such as the Overview of Media Technologies on the Web. These roadmaps aim to provide a short-to-mid term view of where the Web Platform is heading in different areas. We encourage the community to review them and raise comments, or suggest new ones, on the repository’s issue tracker.