The web has been around for quite a long time now, and most people may not realize that the language that makes their web pages was standardized by a group of around 500 member organizations from around the world. This group is the World Wide Web Consortium or W3C (www.w3c.org).
The W3C was created in October 1994, to:
"Lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its interoperability."
W3C, the keeper of the net, is a formalized collaboration between internationally known research organizations: the U.S. office is a research group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS); the European office is a pair of research groups at INRIA (Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique, the French national computer science laboratory); and the Japan/Korea office is a research group at Keio University. The funding model of the Consortium is primarily membership fees from companies, organizations, and government offices. In addition, each W3C office is free to seek additional funding through traditional research or development grants.
All offices share a common Director, Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web.
People at W3C and others that participate as the members of the organization wanted to ensure that the web continued to work no matter what business or organization built tools to support it. Thus, while there might be browser wars in the features that various web browsers offer, they all can communicate across the same medium - the World Wide Web.
W3C's technical work is organized in three broad areas:
- Architecture. The core of this work consists of two specifications: HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, the primary transfer protocol for the Web), and URLs (Uniform Resource Locators, the naming mechanism for the Web).
- User Interface. Focuses on HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and related specifications. The user interface group works on the development of Cascading Style Sheets, internationalization, new graphics formats, improvements to the handling of fonts, printing, etc..
- Technology and Society. Focuses on applications of the web for particular purposes, as well as for evolving the specifications in response to society's needs. Work in this area includes the PICS (Platform for Internet Content Selection) system for labeling information on the web, as well as work on electronic payment negotiation (JEPI, the Joint Electronic Payment Initiative) and security (Digital Signature Initiative).
Most web developers look to the W3C for standards and new technology. This is where the XHTML recommendation came from, and many XML specifications and languages.
Vocabulary of the W3C
- Recommendation: a specification that has been approved by the committee members and made public. This is the highest rating a specification can receive before it became a standard.
- Proposed Recommendation: specification submitted for review to be formalized into a W3C recommendation. These specifications are typically nearly ready for full release and are only awaiting approval.
- Candidate Recommendation: a phase before a recommendation becomes proposed and then final, it is submitted to the users to review and submit technical feedback.
- Working Draft: a specification that is still being worked on by the committee for that specification. This allows developers to get a sense of where the technology behind the web may be heading.
- Note: additional information to help developers work with various specifications. They may also be suggestions for directions that new or existing specifications might take.
- Specification: the rules behind a new technology. Specifications define how the technology will function, and everything about it.
- Interoperability: allows people the freedom to choose the operating system, hardware, and software they want to use, but still have those items work effectively on the internet.
- Deprecated: when an object, element or specification is not useful or even detrimental to the standard, it's marked as deprecated. This is before removing that item completely from the standards listed on the W3C.