W3C - News

• Portable Network Graphics (PNG) Specification (Third Edition) is now a W3C Recommendation

  The PNG Working Group published Portable Network Graphics (PNG) Specification (Third Edition) as a W3C Recommendation. This document describes PNG (Portable Network Graphics), an extensible file format for the lossless, portable, well-compressed storage of static and animated raster images. PNG provides a patent-free replacement for GIF and can also replace many common uses of TIFF. Indexed-color, greyscale, and truecolor images are supported, plus an optional alpha channel. Sample depths range from 1 to 16 bits.The Third Edition adds Animated PNG and High Dynamic Range (HDR) PNG.

• Draft Group Note: Linked Web Storage Use Cases

  The Linked Web Storage Working Group has published a first draft Group Note of Linked Web Storage Use Cases. This document lists user stories and use-cases for the Linked Web Storage (LWS) specifications, as well as requirements identified as necessary to satisfy these use cases.

• W3C invites implementations of MathML Core

  The Math Working Group has published MathML Core as a W3C Candidate Recommendation. This specification defines a core subset of Mathematical Markup Language, or MathML, that is suitable for browser implementation. MathML is a markup language for describing mathematical notation and capturing both its structure and content. The goal of MathML is to enable mathematics to be served, received, and processed on the World Wide Web, just as HTML has enabled this functionality for text.Comments are welcome via GitHub issues by 30 September 2025.

• DPUB-ARIA and DPUB-AAM are now W3C Recommendations

  The Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) Working Group has published Digital Publishing WAI-ARIA Module 1.1 (DPUB-ARIA) and Digital Publishing Accessibility API Mappings 1.1 (DPUB-AAM) as W3C Recommendations.DPUB-ARIA defines a set of ARIA roles to help assistive technology users navigate structural divisions of long-form digital documents, such as eBooks.DPUB-AAM defines how user agents (such as eBook readers) map the DPUB-ARIA markup to platform accessibility APIs.

• New session of the W3Cx course on CSS Basics

  W3C opens today a new session of its CSS Basics course on W3Cx, where you can learn how to take your web pages from bland to bold with the power of CSS styling. This course is part of W3C's "Front-End Web Developer" Professional Certificate.In this self-paced course, we guide you step-by-step in using the latest Web standards to structure your content and presentation like a professional. You will explore numerous CSS features to help you control the look and feel of your site such as colors, fonts and layout. By the end of the course, you should understand all the fundamental elements of CSS and how to use them effectively.You can audit this course for free for 5 weeks after enrolling, or opt for the premium version with unlimited access, graded assessments, and a W3Cx certificate.

• W3C Advisory Committee Elects Advisory Board

  The W3C Advisory Committee has elected the following people to fill seven seats on the W3C Advisory Board (AB), starting 1 July 2025: Daniel Appelquist, Theresa O'Connor, Hiroshi Ota, Avneesh Singh, Hidde de Vries, Song Xu, and Brent Zundel. They join continuing AB participants Wei Ding, Max Gendler, Tatsuya Igarashi, and Elena Lape.Many thanks to the 10 candidates, and thanks for contributions to the AB to Florian Rivoal who stepped down from the AB in January 2025, and to the departing participants, Tantek Çelik, Elika J Etemad, Wendy Reid, and Chris Wilson, whose terms end at the end of June 2025.Created in March 1998, the Advisory Board provides ongoing guidance to the W3C Team on issues of strategy, management, legal matters, process, and conflict resolution. The Advisory Board also serves the W3C Members by tracking issues raised between Advisory Committee meetings, soliciting Member comments on such issues, and proposing actions to resolve these issues. The Advisory Board manages the evolution of the Process Document. As part of a W3C Council, members of the Advisory Board hear and adjudicate on Submission Appeals and Formal Objections. For several years, the AB has conducted its work in a public wiki.The elected Members of the Advisory Board participate as individual contributors and not representatives of their organizations. Advisory Board participants use their best judgment to find the best solutions for the Web, not just for any particular network, technology, vendor, or user.

• Privacy Principles is a W3C Statement

  The W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG) has published the Privacy Principles as a W3C Statement. Privacy is an essential part of the web. This document provides definitions for privacy and related concepts that are applicable worldwide as well as a set of privacy principles that should guide the development of the web as a trustworthy platform. People using the web would benefit from a stronger relationship between technology and policy, and this document is written to work with both.W3C Statements provide a stable reference for documents not intended to be formal standards, but have been formally reviewed and are endorsed by W3C.

• First Public Working Draft: CSS Functions and Mixins Module

  The CSS Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of CSS Functions and Mixins Module. This module defines the ability for authors to define custom functions, acting similar to parametrized custom properties. They can use the full power of CSS’s values and conditional rules. It also defines an early form of a similar idea for CSS rule mixins, allowing parametrized substitution of entire blocks of properties into other rules.

• Portable Network Graphics (PNG) Specification (Third Edition) is a W3C Proposed Recommendation

  Today the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) Working Group published Portable Network Graphics (PNG) Specification (Third Edition) as a W3C Proposed Recommendation. This document describes PNG (Portable Network Graphics), an extensible file format for the lossless, portable, well-compressed storage of static and animated raster images. PNG provides a patent-free replacement for GIF and can also replace many common uses of TIFF. Indexed-color, greyscale, and truecolor images are supported, plus an optional alpha channel. Sample depths range from 1 to 16 bits.PNG is designed to work well in online viewing applications, such as the World Wide Web, so it is fully streamable with a progressive display option. PNG is robust, providing both full file integrity checking and simple detection of common transmission errors. Also, PNG can store color space data for improved color matching on heterogeneous platforms.This specification defines two Internet Media Types, image/png and image/apng.

• The Verifiable Credentials 2.0 family of specifications is now a W3C Recommendation

  The Verifiable Credentials Working Group has published seven W3C Recommendations today, namely:Verifiable Credentials Data Model v2.0: Credentials are a part of our daily lives; driver's licenses are used to assert that we are capable of operating a motor vehicle, university degrees can be used to assert our level of education, and government-issued passports enable us to travel between countries. This specification provides a mechanism to express these sorts of credentials on the Web in a way that is cryptographically secure, privacy respecting, and machine-verifiable.Verifiable Credential Data Integrity 1.0: This specification describes mechanisms for ensuring the authenticity and integrity of Verifiable Credentials and similar types of constrained digital documents using cryptography, especially through the use of digital signatures and related mathematical proofs.Data Integrity EdDSA Cryptosuites v1.0: This specification describes a Data Integrity cryptographic suite for use when creating or verifying a digital signature using the twisted Edwards Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (EdDSA) and Curve25519 (ed25519).Data Integrity ECDSA Cryptosuites v1.0: This specification describes a Data Integrity Cryptosuite for use when generating a digital signature using the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA).Securing Verifiable Credentials using JOSE and COSE: This specification defines how to secure credentials and presentations conforming to the Verifiable Credential data model with JSON Object Signing and Encryption (JOSE), Selective Disclosure for JWTs, and CBOR Object Signing and Encryption (COSE) [RFC9052]. This enables the Verifiable Credential data model to be implemented with standards for signing and encryption that are widely adopted.Controlled Identifiers v1.0: A controlled identifier document contains cryptographic material and lists service endpoints for the purposes of verifying cryptographic proofs from, and interacting with, the controller of an identifier.Bitstring Status List v1.0: This specification describes a privacy-preserving, space-efficient, and high-performance mechanism for publishing status information such as suspension or revocation of Verifiable Credentials through use of bitstrings.See also the W3C Press Release on this publication.