W3C Standards

W3C standards define an Open Web Platform for application development that has the unprecedented potential to enable developers to build rich interactive experiences, powered by vast data stores, that are available on any device. Although the boundaries of the platform continue to evolve, industry leaders speak nearly in unison about how HTML5 will be the cornerstone for this platform. But the full strength of the platform relies on many more technologies that W3C and its partners are creating, including CSS, SVG, WOFF, the Semantic Web stack, XML, and a variety of APIs.

W3C develops these technical specifications and guidelines through a process designed to maximize consensus about the content of a technical report, to ensure high technical and editorial quality, and to earn endorsement by W3C and the broader community.

If you are learning about Web technology, you may wish to start with the introduction below, and follow links for greater detail.

Web Design and Applications involve the standards for building and Rendering Web pages, including HTML, CSS, SVG, Ajax, and other technologies for Web Applications (“WebApps”). This section also includes information on how to make pages accessible to people with disabilities (WCAG), to internationalize them, and make them work on mobile devices.

W3C is focusing on technologies to enable Web access anywhere, anytime, using any device. This includes Web access from mobile phones and other mobile devices as well as use of Web technology in consumer electronics, printers, interactive television, and even automobiles.

Web Architecture focuses on the foundation technologies and principles which sustain the Web, including URIs and HTTP.

In addition to the classic “Web of documents” W3C is helping to build a technology stack to support a “Web of data,” the sort of data you find in databases. The ultimate goal of the Web of data is to enable computers to do more useful work and to develop systems that can support trusted interactions over the network. The term “Semantic Web” refers to W3C’s vision of the Web of linked data. Semantic Web technologies enable people to create data stores on the Web, build vocabularies, and write rules for handling data. Linked data are empowered by technologies such as RDF, SPARQL, OWL, and SKOS.

XML Technologies including XML, XML Namespaces, XML Schema, XSLT, Efficient XML Interchange (EXI), and other related standards.

Web of Services refers to message-based design frequently found on the Web and in enterprise software. The Web of Services is based on technologies such as HTTP, XML, SOAP, WSDL, SPARQL, and others.

The web’s usefulness and growth depends on its universality. We should be able to publish regardless of the software we use, the computer we have, the language we speak, whether we are wired or wireless, regardless of our sensory or interaction modes. We should be able to access the web from any kind of hardware that can connect to the Internet – stationary or mobile, small or large. W3C facilitates this listening and blending via international web standards. These standards ensure that all the crazy brilliance continues to improve a web that is open to us all.

What is the w3c

How do I know I have received one of these calls?

  • The caller may have said that they are from W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium
  • The caller may have said that your PC has a virus that is causing internet problems
  • The caller may have said that they will disconnect your PC from the web unless you login to a website that they will give you details for
  • The caller may have rung more than once

What do I do if I have received a call that fits with all of the above?

  • Refuse to engage with any further calls if they are received
  • Do not follow any links to any websites that you are given
  • Delete all emails received from the callers without opening them

What if I’ve followed their instructions?

  • Disconnect your PC from the Internet
  • Contact a trusted local PC support service for help in making sure that your PC is safe to use – malicious files or programs may have been installed on your computer as a result of your following the instructions from the call

 

W3C is a not-for-profit, member-owned organisation, that develops open and royalty free specifications to drive the evolution of the World Wide Web. W3C does not make unsolicited calls to members of the Public and cannot be responsible for any loss or damage suffered as a result of actions taken as a result of calls of the type described above.

Best thing from Website

Making your very first website is a fun and exciting time, but very few people really know how to go about creating a website. There are blogging platforms, HTML editors, templates and many other things out there that help you. If this is your very first website, then you may not know what really works for you. This guide will help you make a website for beginners, even if you don’t know the first thing about HTML.

Before making your website, you need to have a domain and hosting. The domain is like your website’s name. It is the URL that people will type into their browsers, and it is often how you will be remembered. Buy a domain that matches your topic. For example, if you are making a website about video games, then consider putting the word “video game” in your domain, or using a similar word.

Hosting is also important for your website. A Web host is a business that places your website on a server so that it is active and viewable. While you can host a website yourself, this is much too difficult for new users. Not only that, but hosting your own website can be expensive. There are many hosts out there that offer different services. Look for shared hosting. These are hosting plans for small websites that only cost about $10 or less a month.

Now that you have the hosting and domain, it is time to make your very own website. In the early days of the Internet, people would make static HTML pages. While these still work, they are a little inflexible and difficult to make for beginners. It is also difficult to add content to static HTML pages. Instead, the best way to make a website for beginners is by using WordPress.

Sign into your hosting account and look for a module called, “Fantastico.” This module helps you automatically install scripts and programs onto your website. Go to “WordPress” and then click, “Install.” The process will only take a few seconds before your website is ready to use. However, there is still one more thing to do.

Sign into your WordPress blog and go to the admin panel. Under the “Appearance” header you will see a section labeled, “Themes.” Search through the available themes and then click on one to activate it. This will give you a better looking website that you can be proud of. Not only that, but choosing the proper theme also makes your content really sing.

Making a website for beginners is easy with WordPress and other similar systems. While there are others ways to make a new website, this is the easiest. Considering the time you need to choose a domain and the best theme, this should take an hour or less. Now that you know what you are doing, go out there and make your dream site. It only costs about $20 for the domain and hosting, and using the WordPress system makes it easy for you to setup your website.

Best time to post website

The tricky thing I’ve come across is that since the web is still so new, a lot of the research available to us is conflicting. We really need more time and more studies to get definitive answers about what works best, and the fact that our audience members are constantly changing their own activity patterns makes it even harder to work out for sure. Looking at the latest social media stats seems to only confirm that.

So my suggestion would be to use this guide as just that—a guide to help you work out what to test for your own audience, so that you can see what actually works best in your specific case.

 

Dan Zarrella has some more great stats on this topic, but he makes a good point about the pros and cons of the timing you choose. One thing Dan suggests we consider is that if we post during time of higher traffic, we’re more likely to have higher bounce rates and get lost amongst the noise of other content being published.

On the other hand, posting at times when fewer people are online will garner less traffic and engagement, but give our posts more prominence and less competition against other content.

  • 70% of users say they read blogs in the morning
  • More men read blogs at night than women
  • Mondays are the highest traffic days for an average blog
  • 11am is usually the highest traffic hour for an average blog
  • Comments are usually highest on Saturdays and around 9am on most days
  • Blogs that post more than once per day have a higher chance of inbound links and more unique views

Timing depends on the individual

Timing is difficult to get exactly right, and a big part of this is because we all have different schedules and routines for checking email or using social media. An experiment by online retailer eBags showed this point perfectly. Looking at the latest social media statistics the range of different schedules seems to only increase too.

The company thought that when users were signing up to an email list, that was probably a good time of day for them to be online, so sending emails to them at that same time of day would work best. By analyzing the behavior of each individual user, eBags sent out emails to users at the same time of day they had signed up for the email list.

When you want create www.

Create a Website

Welcome! My name is Ian. I’ve been creating websites since 1996. If you need to create a website, but don’t know where to start, you’ve come to the right place!

Here, I explain how to create a website. I also explain how to get your own domain name (eg, www.yourname.com), and how to host your website (make it available to the world).

Creating a website is much easier than you might think. By following these steps, you will be able to create your own website in no time at all!

 

A Warning about Free Websites

You might occasionally encounter someone offering you a free website. Basically these enable you to sign up, and start building your website for free.

But… a word of caution!

There are things they might not tell you when they’re trying to sell you a free website. While a few companies will be completely upfront about these extra costs, others will fail to mention them …until you’ve signed up:

  • Your “free” website does not have it’s own domain name (i.e. www.yourname.com). If you want your own domain name, you’ll have to pay for it. And you will probably pay more than you should.
  • Your “free” website may have ads displayed all over it. This enables the company (not you), to earn money from your website. To remove the ads, you will usually have to pay money for a premium package.
  • Most of the really good features are actually part of a “premium” package – which you have to pay for.

Of course, it’s entirely up to you which way you go. But there is one thing I will always recommend: Get your own domain name – now!

Registering your own domain name is the best piece of advice I can give. Without this, your website does not have it’s own “web address”. This might not sound like much now, but later, once you’ve built up a fantastic website with loads of content, you will see what I mean. Without your own domain name, your “web address” is not actually yours, it’s the company who provides your “free” website. If they decide to change something, you could lose all your hard work. Imagine losing months, or even years, of hard work, just because you chose not to register a domain name!

So, if you’re shopping around, check for those three things before you sign up with anyone.

How to ..

STEP 1: REGISTER A DOMAIN NAME
Domain name
Before you even think about building your website, you should register a domain name. A domain name is the thing that looks like this: “yourdomain.com”.

Your domain name represents the URL (or permanent web address) of your website. Therefore, when anyone types in “yourdomain.com” or “www.yourdomain.com”, they will see your website.

You register your domain name through a domain name registrar or hosting provider. You simply check that your preferred domain name is available, then register it (online).

Domain names are registered on an annual basis, and you can usually register it many years in advance (or set ‘auto-renew’).

Prices can range from between $10 to $15 up to as much as $35 or even $45 (this is for the same product!). ZappyHost has some of the best prices on the web – and if you purchase hosting at the same time, the domain name is even cheaper ($1.99 at time of writing).

If you don’t have a domain name yet, get your domain name now (before someone else beats you to it!)

STEP 2: GET A WEB HOST
Web Hosting
A web host (or hosting provider), is a company that makes your website available for the world to see. They have the equipment and technical skills to make sure your website is available to the world, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Choose your hosting provider carefully – a good host will have excellent support. A bad host can have almost no support at all! If you’re new to creating websites, good support can reduce the stress that comes from doing something for the first time.

Also, some web hosts have an online website builder. A good website builder can enable anyone to make a website – even complete novices.

If you like the idea of using an online website builder, check out the website builder below. This enables you to build a website virtually within minutes, and hosting is included (as well as plenty of other extras).

If you don’t need a website builder (i.e. you prefer to build your website by yourself), you can find some great hosting plans here. Once you’ve built your website, simply upload it via FTP.

If you’d like to learn more about web hosts, check out my web hosting tutorial.

STEP 3: BUILD YOUR WEBSITE
Image of a website
This part can be as easy or as hard as you like it to be!

The easy way? The easiest way to build a website is to use your web host’s website builder (assuming they have one). As mentioned, ZappyHost provides an online Website Builder which makes it extremely easy for you to make your website.

The hard way? OK, if you think a website builder sounds too much like cheating, you probably want to learn how to build a website the way the pros do it – by coding/programming. If this sounds like you, then see this introduction to making your own website. Also check out the Quackit homepage for links to thousands of pages of tutorials and other web building resources.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

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The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web (abbreviated WWW or W3). Founded by Tim Berners-Lee at MIT and currently headed by him, the consortium is made up of member organizations which maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the World Wide Web. As of 29 March 2012, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has 351 members. W3C also engages in education and outreach, develops software and serves as an open forum for discussion about the Web.

History

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded by Tim Berners-Lee after he left the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in October, 1994. It was founded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Computer Science (MIT/LCS) with support from the European Commission and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which had pioneered the Internet and its predecessor ARPANET.

W3C tries to enforce compatibility and agreement among industry members in the adoption of new standards defined by the W3C. Incompatible versions of HTML are offered by different vendors, causing inconsistency in how Web pages are displayed. The consortium tries get all those vendors to implement a set of core principles and components which are chosen by the consortium.

It was originally intended that CERN host the European branch of W3C; however, CERN wished to focus on particle physics, not information technology. In April 1995 the Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique (INRIA) became the European host of W3C, with Keio University becoming the Japanese branch in September 1996. Starting in 1997, W3C created regional offices around the world; as of September 2009, it has eighteen World Offices covering Australia, the Benelux countries (Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium), Brazil, China, Finland, Germany, Austria, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, South Korea, Morocco, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom and Ireland.

In January 2003, the European host was transferred from INRIA to the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM), an organization that represents European national computer science laboratories.

In October 2012, W3C convened a community of large Web players and publishers to establish a MediaWiki wiki that seeks to documents open Web standards called WebPlatform and WebPlatform Docs.

Specification Maturation

Sometimes, when a Specification becomes too large, it is split into independent Modules which can mature at their own pace. Subsequent Editions of a Module or Specification are known as Levels, and are denoted by the first integer in the title (eg. CSS3 = Level 3). Subsequent Revisions on each Level are denoted by an integer following a decimal point (eg. CSS2.1 = Revision 1).

The W3C Standard Formation Process is defined within the W3C Process Document, outlining Four Maturity Levels that each new Standard or Recommendation must progress through:

Working Draft (WD)

After enough content has been gathered from Editor Drafts and discussion, it may be published as a Working Draft for review by the community. A WD document is the first form of a standard that is publicly available. Commentary by virtually anyone is accepted, though no promises are made with regard to action on any particular element of said commentary.

At this stage, the standard document may likely have significant differences from its final form. As such, any who implement WD standards should be ready to significantly modify their implementations as the standard matures.

Candidate Recommendation (CR)

A candidate recommendation is a version of the standard that is more firm than the WD. At this point, the group responsible for the standard is satisfied that the standard does what is needed of it. The purpose of the CR is to elicit aid from the development community as to how implementable the standard is.

The standard document may change further, but at this point, significant features are mostly locked. The design of those features can still change due to feedback from implementors.

Proposed Recommendation (PR)

A proposed recommendation is the version of the standard that has passed the prior two levels. The users of said standard have had their say, and the implementors of the standard have likewise had a chance at providing input. At this stage, the document has been submitted to the W3C Advisory Council for final approval. While this step is important, it rarely causes any significant changes to a standard as it passes to the next phase.

Note: both Candidates and Proposals may enter “Last Call” to signal that any further feedback must be provided expeditiously.

W3C Recommendation (REC)

This is the most mature stage of development. At this point, the standard has undergone extensive review and testing, under both theoretical and practical conditions. The standard is now endorsed by the W3C as a standard, indicating its readiness for deployment within its problem domain, and encouraging more widespread support among implementors and authors.

Recommendations can sometimes be implemented incorrectly, partially, or not at all, but many standards define two or more levels of conformance that developers must follow if they wish to label their product as W3C-compliant.

Later Revisions (WD)(NOTES)

A Recommendation may be updated or extended by separately-published, non-technical Errata or Editor Drafts until enough substantial edits accumulate for producing a new edition or level of the Recommendation. Additionaly, The W3C publishes various kinds of informative Notes which are to be used as a reference.

Certification

Unlike the ISOC and other international standards bodies, the W3C does not have a certification program. The W3C has decided, for now, that it is not suitable to start such a program owing to the risk of creating more drawbacks for the community than benefits.

Administration

The Consortium is jointly administered by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL, located in Stata Center) in the USA, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) (in Sophia Antipolis, France), and Keio University (in Japan). The W3C also has World Offices in sixteen regions around the world. The W3C Offices work with their regional Web communities to promote W3C technologies in local languages, broaden W3C’s geographical base, and encourage international participation in W3C Activities.

W3C has a relatively small staff team, around 50–60 worldwide recently (as of 2010). The CEO of W3C as of Dec. 2010 is Jeffrey Jaffe, former CTO of Novell. The majority of standardization work is done by external experts in W3C’s various working groups.

Membership

The domain w3.org attracted at least 11 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com study. The Consortium is governed by its membership. The list of members is available to the public. Members include businesses, nonprofit organizations, universities, governmental entities, and individuals.

Membership requirements are transparent except for one requirement. An application for membership must be reviewed and approved by W3C. Many guidelines and requirements are stated in detail, but there is no final guideline about the process or standards by which membership might be finally approved or denied.

The cost of membership is given on a sliding scale, depending on the character of the organization applying and the country in which it is located. Countries are categorized by the World Bank’s most recent grouping by GNI (“Gross National Income”) per capita.

Criticism

Domination by large organizations

The W3C has been criticized as being dominated by larger organizations and thus writing standards that represent their interests. For example, a member of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (WCAG WG) complained that: The process is stacked in favour of multinationals with expense accounts who can afford to talk on the phone for two hours a week and jet to world capitals for meetings.

A similar criticism, responding to large software company complaints about the slow pace of W3C’s formulation of XML/web services standards, appeared in Cnet’s news.com in 2002: “I’m not convinced that developers are too bothered,” said Edd Dumbill, editor of XML.com, who has worked as a software developer on Web services. “I think developers are being poorly served by the fact that the big companies have dominated the work of the W3C over the last year. The W3C does more or less what its members tell it to. So I don’t have a huge amount of sympathy for the complaints of large companies.”