Mission | Activities | Industry Impact
Nearby: People of the Interaction Domain.
W3C's Interaction Domain is responsible for developing technologies that shape the Web's user interface. These technologies include (X)HTML, the markup language that started the Web. We also work on second-generation Web languages initiated at the W3C: CSS, MathML, SMIL and SVG and XForms all have become an integral part of the Web. Finally, we develop ways to integrate these components together into the Rich Web Clients of tomorrow.
W3C Interaction Domain technologies enable millions of people every day to browse the Web and to author Web content. Industry uses these technologies for purposes such as distributing information within an organization and creating new business opportunities.
"Combining the various XML markups and Web APIs developed by W3C into an integrated system is the next big challenge. We are already seeing the fruits of this work on both desktop and mobile platforms - and the future is even more exciting" -- Chris Lilley, Interaction Domain Leader
From the introduction of the Graphics Activity Statement:
Graphics continue to play a critical role in everyday usage of the Web, from decorative graphics through advertising to diagrams and interactive graphical user interfaces. Graphical front-ends for live networked data, Web services, and visualizations of the Semantic Web are current growth areas as is the use of graphics in industrial control, automation, and embedded applications.
The W3C Graphics Activity has worked in this area for over ten years. Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), the current effort of the Activity, brings the powerful combination of interactive, animated two-dimensional vector graphics and Extensible Markup Language (XML). WebCGM 2.0 is used mainly in industrial and defence technical documents. Earlier work was concerned with Portable Network Graphics (PNG) and with WebCGM 1.0.
Read more on the Graphics Activity home page.
Chris Lilley is the Activity Lead.
The Activity includes these groups:
From the introduction of the HTML Activity Statement:
HTML is the family name for the group of languages that form the lingua franca of the World Wide Web.
The XHTML2 Working Group is chartered to continue to evolve HTML into an XML-based markup language, modularize it to make it easier to combine with other markup languages, and correct the problems known still to exist in areas such as internationalization, accessibility, device independence and forms processing. The HTML Working Group has been recently chartered to evolve traditional HTML. The Hypertext Coordination Group (HCG) is chartered to to address issues that may arise concerning several Working Groups in the Hypertext area. Participants in the HCG may also include liaison representatives of other standards bodies.
Read more on the HTML Activity home page.
Steven Pemberton is the Activity Lead.
The Activity includes these groups:
From the introduction of the Math Activity Statement:
Mathematics is an essential aspect of scientific communication and education. Therefore, to realize the potential of the Web for science, it must be possible to use mathematics on the Web. Mathematical expressions must move seamlessly between the Web and a wide range of related environments including authoring tools and content management systems, XML-based publishing work flows, e-learning environments, and scientific computing software.
To address this need, W3C brought together key players and major stake holders to devise a solution. The Math Working Group created the Mathematical Markup Language (MathML), a highly-structured, information-rich, XML encoding for mathematical expressions, and is chartered to maintain it.
MathML facilitates the authoring and presentation of mathematical expressions in print and on the screen, and forms the basis for machine to machine communication of mathematics on the Web. Designed as an XML application, MathML provides two sets of tags, one for the presentation of mathematics and the other associated with the meaning behind equations. MathML is not designed for people to enter by hand; specialized tools provide the means for typing in and editing mathematical expressions.
The MathML 1.0 Recommendation first appeared on 7 April 1998. Four subsequent revisions have followed, culminating with the MathML 2.0, Second Edition on 21 October 2003. MathML 2, Second Edition is fully synchronized with Unicode 4.0. It is also fully integrated with XHTML and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), and interoperates well with other W3C technologies such as XSL (the Extensible Stylesheet Language), CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), and XML Schema.
Development of the next update of MathML, called MathML 3.0, started in 2006. It will support, among other things additional notations, features for online assessment (online learning) and right-to-left formulas (in particular for Arabic).
Read more on the Math Activity home page.
Bert Bos is the Activity Lead.
The Activity includes this group:
From the introduction of the Rich Web Client Activity Statement:
The Rich Web Clients Activity contains the work within W3C on Web Applications and Compound Document Formats.
With the ubiquity of Web browsers and Web document formats across a range of platforms and devices, many developers are using the Web as an application environment. Examples of applications built on rich Web clients include reservation systems, online shopping or auction sites, games, multimedia applications, calendars, maps, chat applications, weather displays, clocks, interactive design applications, stock tickers, currency converters and data entry/display systems.
Web client applications typically have some form of programmatic control. They may run within the browser or within another host application. A Web client application is typically downloaded on demand each time it is "executed," allowing a developer to update the application for all users as needed. Such applications are usually smaller than regular desktop applications in terms of code size and functionality, and may have interactive rich graphical interfaces.
"Compound document" is the W3C term for a document that combines multiple formats, such as XHTML, SVG, SMIL and XForms. The W3C Compound Document Formats (CDF) Working Group is specifying the behavior of some format combinations, addressing the needs for an extensible and interoperable Web.
"Web API" means the assorted scripting methods that are used to build rich Web applications, mashups, Web 2.0 sites. Standardizing them improves interoperability and reduces site development costs.
"Web Application Formats" means a variety of things from XBL for skinning applications to Widgets for deploying small Web applications outside the browser.
Read more on the Rich Web Client Activity home page.
Chris Lilley is the Activity Lead.
The Activity includes these groups:
From the introduction of the Style Activity Statement:
Many people are accustomed to style sheets in word-processing. W3C's style sheets offer extensive control over the presentation of Web pages. The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) language is widely implemented. It is playing an important role in styling not just HTML, but also many kinds of XML documents: XHTML, SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) and SMIL (the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language), to name a few. It is also an important means of adapting pages to different devices, such as mobile phones or printers.
W3C is also developing the Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL). XSL applies a “style sheet” to transform one XML-based document into another. XSL and CSS can be combined. XSL is described in the XML Activity Statement.
W3C has a page on CSS resources, including browsers, authoring tools and tutorials.
Read more on the Style Activity home page.
Bert Bos is the Activity Lead.
The Activity includes this group:
From the introduction of the Synchronized Multimedia Activity Statement:
The Synchronized Multimedia Activity designed the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL, pronounced "smile") for choreographing multimedia presentations where audio, video, text and graphics are combined in real time. SMIL is a W3C Recommendation that enables authors to specify and control the precise time a sentence is spoken and make it coincide with the display of a given image.
The Synchronized Multimedia (SYMM) Working Group completed SMIL 1.0, SMIL 2.0 and SMIL 2.1 and is currently working on a new version (SMIL 3.0) which adds the following new features through new modules:
- SMIL 3.0 smilText provides a new media type for use in SMIL presentations.
- SMIL 3.0 External Timing defines an XML timing language that makes SMIL 3.0 element and attribute timing control available to a wide range of other XML languages. Because of its similarity with external style and positioning descriptions in the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) language, this functionality has been termed SMIL Timesheets. It can be seen as a temporal counterpart of CSS. Whereas CSS defines the spatial layout of the document and formatting of the elements, SMIL Timesheets specify which elements are active at a certain moment and what their temporal scope is within a document.
- SMIL 3.0 State provides a mechanism for the author to create more complex control flow than what SMIL provides through the timing and content control modules, without using a scripting language.
- SMIL 3.0 DOM describes the SMIL 3.0 DOM support. SMIL is an XML-based language and conforms to the (XML) DOM Core [DOM1], [DOM2]. A language profile may include DOM support.
The Timed Text Working Group is designing an XML-based format used for the representation of streamed text synchronized with other timed media. Typical applications are real time subtitling of foreign-language movies, captioning for people lacking audio devices or having hearing impairments, karaoke, scrolling news items, and teleprompter applications.
Read more on the Synchronized Multimedia Activity home page.
Thierry Michel is the Activity Lead.
The Activity includes these groups:
From the introduction of the XForms Activity Statement:
XForms is a markup language that addresses the modern needs of electronic forms. It is based on XML and can deliver the collected values as an XML document. It addresses questions of authorability, usability, accessibility, device independence, internationalization, integration into different host languages, and reducing the need for scripting.
Read more on the XForms Activity home page.
Steven Pemberton is the Activity Lead.
The Activity includes this group:
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