Nyhetsbrev mars 2000

Innehåll

Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0
Ny rekommendation 2000-02-03
XHTML 1.0
Ny rekommendation 2000-01-26
HTML 4.01
Ny rekommendation 1999-12-24
W3C och WAP Forum i samarbete
1999-12-08
9th International World Wide Web Conference
The Web: The Next Generation
Amsterdam 15 - 19 maj 2000
Nya medlemsorganisationer

Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0

W3C-rekommendation 3 februari 2000

Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) ger riktlinjer för utvecklare och designers av innehållsverktyg som syftar till att dessa dels ska generera ett lättillgängligt innehåll såväl som att verktygen i sig ska vara lättillgängliga. ATAG ryms inom W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) som syftar till att alla oberoende av eventuella fysiska eller tekniska handikapp ska kunna ta del av innehållet på en websida.

ATAG är en samling riktlinjer i en serie av tre för "accesibility"/tillgänglighet. Övriga är Web Content Accessibility Guidelines vilka redan är en rekommendation samt User Agent Accessibility Guidelines vilka snart väntas bli en W3C rekommendation

Exempel på innehåll i riktlinjerna:

Understödja goda vanor avseende lättillgänglighet, dvs se till att vertygens utdata lyder Content Accessibility Guidelines. Till exempel ska ett HTML-redigeringsprogram se till att det genereras ATL-taggar för bilder och att dessa inte kan tas bort.
Generera standard markup: Se till att koden ansluter sig till de relevanta W3C-rekommendationerna och varna användaren om denna redigerar kod som från början är felaktig.
Tillhandahålla funktionalitet för kontroll av innehållet m a p tillgänglighet: Detta kan t ex innebära att varna om man har använt färger som normalt inte kan särskiljas av färgblinda.

Huvudsakligen finns sju riktlinjer med omfattande bakgrundsinformation samt en prioritetsordnad checklista för verktygsdesigners.

IBM, RealNetworks, Sausage, SoftQuad, Amaya återfinns bland de företag som har kommit överens om att implementera dessa riktilinjer i sina produkter.

Stora företag som Boeing, Bell Atlantic och Electricty de France har uttryckt gläjde över tillkomsten av ATAG eftersom att man räknar med att få tiullgång verktyg som snabbt och effektivt skapar allmänt tillgängligt webinnehåll.

För mera information se http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-ATAG10-20000203/

XHTML 1.0: The Extensible HyperText Markup Language

HTML 4.0 uttryckt i XML 1.0
Ny rekommendation den 26:e januari.

Den slutgilitga formen för XHTML 1.0 föreslogs redan i augusti 1999 och antogs den 26:e januari som en W3C-rekommendation.

Den fullständiga rekommendationen finns att läsa hos W3C:
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1

XHTML 1.0 har utvecklats av W3Cs arbetsgrupp för HTML för att övergå från det rent SGML-baserade HTML till XHTML som baseras på XML. Genom att skapa en bakåtkompatibel XHTML-version kan XHTML-dokument visas av redan nu existerande webbläddrare.

För att uppnå detta omformulerar XHTML 1.0 HTML 4 i XML 1.0 utan att lägga till nya finesser. Detta minimerar inlärningperioden och gör det enkelt att börja använda XML för att beskriva webbinnehållet.

W3C har tagit fram ett hjälpmedel "the W3C Open Source HTML Tidy utility" för att underlätta konvertering av existerande HTML-kod till XHTML-kod.

HTML 4.01

W3C Rekommendation 24 December 1999

En uppdatering av W3Cs HTML 4.0-rekommendation från april 1998 har gjorts. En rad förändringar har införts som W3C rekommenderar utvecklare att använda.

Listan över ändringar finns att hitta på
http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/appendix/changes.html#19991224

och själva specifikationen finns att läsa på
http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/

W3C och WAP Forum etablerar formellt samarbete

1999-12-08

Den 8:e december annonserade W3C och Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) Forum (www.wapforum.org) en formell samarbetsrelation för att tillsammans ta fram nästa generations webspecifikationer vilka fullt ut ska understöjda trådlösa enheter som mobiltelefoner, personsökare och PDAer, på World Wide Web.

WAP Forum och W3C samarbetar nu för att utveckla en gemensam process för att skapa nästa generations XML-baserade specifikationer, definiera testprocedurer och implementationsprocesser samt marknadsföra dessa gentemot internetindustrin i stort.

WAP Forum (www.wapforum.org) är en industrisammanslutning med över 150 fullständiga medlemmar där bl a mobiltelefontillverkare, telefonbolag, PDA-tillverkare och andra stora IT-bolag finns representerade. Medlemmarna representerar c:a 95% av världsmarknaden för mobiltelefoni med 100 miljoner abbonenter.

WWW 9 Amsterdam 15-19 May, 2000

Join five world leaders in the 21st Century Web community as they deliver keynote speeches at The Ninth International World Wide Web Conference (WWW9), the only Web conference where leaders from academia, research, government and industry meet on a global stage. The conference will be held May 15-19, 2000, at the Amsterdam RAI, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, with Web-related hardware, software, and services expositions to open May 16-18. Registration for the conference is available online at http://www9.org.

The keynote speakers include:

Egbert-Jan Sol, Vice President Technology at Ericsson: "Making the Internet Mobile for Everybody"
Paul de Bot, Vice President Business Development at Philips Digital Networks: "The Convergence of Internet and Television Technologies: How will it Change the Living Room Experience?"
Charles W. Davies, Group Development Director at Psion PLC: "Wireless Information Devices and the Mobile Internet"
M. Graeber Jordan, CEO of GJordan.com LLC: "The Spirit of the WWW in the Corporate Intranet"
Lawrence Lessig, Berkman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School: "Cyberspace's Constitution"

The conference will last five full days with Tutorials and Workshops on day one, Keynotes and tracks for Refereed Papers, Poster Sessions, Web and Industry track, Web/Internet and Society track, Culture track, Panels and Invited Speakers on days two through four, and a Developers' Day on day five. The conference is also a unique opportunity to lear about the latest developments on Web standards, due to the extensive W3C track, organized by the W3C itself.

Please check the conference Web site at http://www9.org for the full program and other details, and register now to take advantage of earlybird discounts.

Ivan Herman, CWI, Amsterdam, NL, and Albert Vezza, CNRI, Reston, USA WWW9 Conference Co-Chairs

Nya medlemmar

Antalet medlemmar var i början av februari uppe i 399. Det är glädjande att notera att allt flera svenska medlemmar kan räknas in i W3C-gemenskapen. Här följer en brittisk sammanställning över de senaste medlemmarna:

Allegis Corporation: based in San Francisco, the Allegis Open Engine provides a foundation for enterprise-wide, web-based applications development with XML and 128 bit encryption support. It has also added Partner Relationship management to eCommerce.
Artesia Technolgies: this Washington-DC based company provides digital asset management solutions via its TEAMS XML-based software that allows you to manage a variety of media with metadata for organisation and searching. The Washington Post and General Motors are two of their customers.
Blue Sky Software: makes the RoboHELP tool for automating the production of HELP files (including HTML versions).
CSIR Mikomtek: A part of South Africa's Council for Science and Industrial Research. Mikomtek is concerned with information and communication technologies. Its Communiaction and Information Delivery System (CiDS) which provides high speed communication using cellular radio communication. It consults in the area of information security. Its most famous product is probably Supertag which allows tagged items to be counted using Radio Frequency Identification even when the items are still packed in cartons.
Deitel & Associates: based in Sudbury, Massachusetts, Deitel is a training organisation with a strong interest in the internet, Java and the Web. Prentice-Hall is part of Deitel.
DevelopMentor: Another training organisation. DevelopMentor specializes in providing instructor-led training courses at training facilities in Southern California, Boston, Portland, and the UK. The London facility opens in Hammersmith next January.
E-Business Technology Institute: this is an independently funded Institute of the University of Hong Kong which fosters an environment where people across disciplines can research e-business applications and development
epinions.com: epinions provides opinions. Its aim is to allow the consumer to make better buying decisions on the Web. It allows individuals to make comments on products with the aim of setting up a Web of trust based on the opinions of your friends and colleagues. Areas covered include Newspapers, Casinos, Broadway Shows, Palm Software, Home Networking, Aerobic Equipment, and Windsurfing.
eTranslate: provides a wide range of translation facilities and runs the eTranslate.net web site for language professionals. It has offices in the USA, France and Chile and provides localisation services for web sites.
Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ): UK's famous code breaking headquarters in World War 2.
HitchHiker Software GmbH: provides software for the German travel industry.
Indicii Salus: provides security solutions for e-commerce with a particular interest in PKI and digital signatures. Its Xenophon cryptography software is aimed at secure e-commerce.
InfoComm Development Authority (iDA) of Singapore: it has the mission to develop and promote info-communications technology (ICT) in Singapore. Its recent survey showed that 59% of households in Singapore owned at least one PC with 42% connected to the Internet.
Information Internet: Information Internet was founded in 1995 with the specific objective of developing low cost, real-time, fully electronic, trading. Its MarketMaker software provides a complete trading solution. Its Treasury model, for example,allows the user to access real time pricing, charts and news from either the company's dealers or third party feeds.
Interface Systems: its mission is to make legacy output Internet-ready with its Legacy-To-internet (L2i) technology. One of its products provides electronic bill presenting and payment.
INTERSHOP Communications: the company provides software for selling goods and services over the web. INTERSHOP enfinity is a complete ecommerce system containing application, transactivity and catalog servers with an XML interface.
IPR Systems Pty Limited: this Australian company is concerned with Digital Rights Management (the tools that enable the trading of knowledge and Intellectual property rights).
IXIA: this Canadian company provides performance tools for document management solutions based on XML. NewScan provides a search engine for 50 Canadian newspapers using XML. Its TEXTML free server provides searching based on the XML tags and which tag content should be searched.
Jacada Ltd.: this Atlanta-based company provides an interface between legacy mainframe systems and modern Java and HTML front ends for ecommerce.
Jasc Software: provides Windows-based tools for digital image editing and image management. PaintShop Pro is its best known product.
Lexica LLC: San Francisco-based company develops e-business supply chain management software. Its strategy is to deliver XML-based integrated platforms for the end-to-end automation of complex business-to-business transactions. Lexica Online supports InsureZone.com, a Web site that provides instant comparison shopping and the ability to buy an insurance policy online.
Locus Dialogues: this Canadian Company's Liaison speech portal software provides multi-lingual voice-enabled auto attendant support. The platform includes core speech technologies (automatic speech recognition, natural language understanding, speaker identification and speaker verification). It provides spoken access to web pages.
MagnaSource, LLC: a web site design house using multi-media and animation (Shockwave and Flash).
Mediasurface: this UK company's main product is MediaSurface 2.0 which provides all the facilities needed to define, manage and evolve a complex web site. Users include Reuters, Oxford University Press and W S Atkins.
Metastorm, Inc.: the company's flagship product, Metastorm e-work, is a web-based Enterprise Work Management platform that allows organisations to integrate data, systems, and people in efficient and responsive business processes that extend across and beyond the enterprise.
Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation: NRK is the main broadcasting company of Norway with a number of internet services. It launched its weekly Internet radio programme Radionettet aimed at describing 'how technology influences our culture, way of living and working'.
Oratrix: this Dutch start-up out of CWI markets the GRiNS editor and player for SMIL.
Oxford Brookes University: home of the BrookesTalk web browser. Brookes have just recruited David Duce from RAL so they also have an interest in scalable vector graphics.
Palm Reach: this Swedish company has on 17 January changed its name to room33 to avoid confusion with other companies with Palm in the name. Zaheed Haque and others left Ericsson to set up the company to produce web-based products for the mobile internet and has the first commercial wireless portal.
Pick Systems: this long established company is into data base management systems. It has recently announced a range of XML-based products.
room33 AB: this Swedish company is mainly concerned with mobile Internet services that can be accessed from all digital communication devices connected to the Internet (WAP-enabled phones, handheld computers etc).
SAGA Software: SAGA's SagaVista software provides enterprise integration solutions for companies.
Schneider Electric Industries: Schneider employs 61000 people in 130 countries. Its main areas of business are electrical distribution and industrial control and automation.
Starlab: StarLab is a blue sky research Laboratory that came out of the Belgian company Riverland. An example of its developments is the CATBrowser, a web browser for children. This is a Child Aware Technology (CAT) that provides a safe environment and monitors the ability of users and adapts the interface to their capabilities.
Stratweb: this French company has a French language web site so difficult to say much about it!
SurroMed, Inc.: based in Palo Alto, SurroMed is a startup biotechnology company which seeks to reduce the cost and improve the outcome of clinical trials through the analysis of cellular and soluble factors in blood.
The Connection Factory: this Dutch startup is focusing on delivering XHive, a full blown XML database and a XHive based publishing system. XHive stores and retrieves XML documents, or XML document fragments. XHive is build from the ground up, based on an object oriented design to offer maximum performance and flexibility.
Uniform Code Council, Inc.: the mission of the Uniform Code Council is to take a global leadership role in establishing and promoting multi-industry standards for product identification and related electronic communication. It is responsible for the Universal Product Code (UPC). It has a strong interest in XML.
University of Kent at Canterbury: this UK university has been involved with the web for many years and hosts the main UK academic cache and acts as catalyst to a number of UK web-based initiatives.