The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) established in October 1994, hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Computer Science [MIT/LCS] in the United States, at the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique [INRIA] at various locations in France, and at the Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus in Japan. The Consortium has developed more than forty technical specifications for the Web's infrastructure, leading the World Wide Web to its full potential.
The W3C Activities are generally organized into groups:
- Working Groups (for technical developments)
- Interest Groups (for more general work)
- Coordination Groups (for communication among related groups)
These groups are composed of representatives from Member organizations, the W3C Team , and invited experts. The groups produce the bulk of W3C's results: technical reports, open source software, and services (e.g., validation services).
Because of the complexity and variety of these technologies, it is not surprise that one will get lost easily in browsing W3C's Web site. However, there is a way to look at the structure of these technologies. The W3C Team groups the related activities into four "domains":
- Architecture - DOM, Internationalization, Jigsaw, URI, Web Services, XML
- Interaction - Amaya, Device Independence, Graphics, HTML, Math, Multimodal Interaction, Style, Synchronized Multimedia, Voice Browser
- Technology and Society - Privacy, Semantic Web, XML Encryption, XML Key Management, XML Signature
- Web Accessibility Initiative - WAI International Program Office, WAI Technical Activity
Starting in 2003, Document Formats is merged into the Interaction Domain. The Internationalization Activity and work on XSL and XSLT move to Architecture. The Technology and Society and the Web Accessibility Initiative Domains are unchanged.
I have touched the first three domains except the Web Accessibility Initiative domain.
W3C is transforming the architecture of the initial Web (essentially HTML, URIs, and HTTP) into the architecture of tomorrow's Web, built atop the solid foundation provided by XML.
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