Why Web Standard are Important: An overview

of W3C, its operation and current technical

directions
AusWeb 2006, Australia, 3rd July, 2006
 Why Web Standards are Important...

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

“To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines
that ensure long-term growth for the Web”

Founded by Tim Berners-Lee in 1994

Develops open Recommendations (Web Standards)
over eighty so far…
Engages in education, outreach, develops guidelines…
A neutral forum for building consensus around Web standards

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Just a glimpse (we will come back to this

later)…

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

W3C is international…

W3C Hosts (in red) and W3C Offices (in blue) around the Globe

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Some guiding principles at W3C

Web Technologies should be interoperable
the Web is based on a large palette of technologies
no technology can pretend to cover all needs on the Web
hence the interoperability of technologies necessary
Web Standards should be open, i.e., non-proprietary
The Web should be accessible to all

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

W3C’s long term goals

Web for Everyone
regardless of language, user capabilities, geographical location, device used for access,…
Web on Everything
not only PC-s, but Phones, PDA-s, Television,…
Knowledge Base, Advanced data searching and sharing
information for both human and machine processing
Trust and Confidence
technologies for collaborative environment
a Web with accountability, security, confidence, and confidentiality

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

W3C members
W3C Members ensure the strength of W3C
they influence the strategic direction of Web Standard Development
each member is represented in the Advisory Committee (AC)
the AC has regular meetings (twice a year) where issues are discussed
the community of key players on the Web
Recommendations are developed by the Members’ experts
documents are developed in Working Groups staffed by the Members’ representatives
altogether, they form a community of more than 600 experts
the keyword is consensus building

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Around 400 members from more than 28

countries…

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 Why Web Standards are Important...

… and with a wide activity spectrum

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 Why Web Standards are Important...

W3C staff
More than 50 researcher and engineers
Very international team (residence in 9 countries, around 12
nationalities…)
Their role is:
provide directions to W3C
coordinate the activities of W3C
facilitate active member participation
communicate the results of W3C

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Typical W3C work flow

1. A W3C Workshop is organized in an area of interest
possible starting point for standardization
members can have members submissions that are taken into account, too
2. A Working group (WG) is formed
members have the possibility to review, and vote on the charter of the group (or to oppose its
creation…)
3. WG regularly publishes drafts to seek comments from the public
4. Implementations of the new technology are called for
5. Members review the final proposal
6. If final review is positive, W3C publishes the new Recommendation

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

W3C groups and activities

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 Why Web Standards are Important...

So, what do we do ?

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Some highlights for this time

1. The “horizontals”
2. Mobile Web
3. Semantic Web

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

The “horizontals”…

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

The Web is for everybody!

Regardless of language, culture, geographical location
Regardless of user capabilities
Regardless of device types and capabilities

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Horizontal activities at W3C

W3C has a number of activities to reinforce those principles
“horizontal” review of all W3C technologies:
internationalization, multimodality, accessibility, device independence, …
specification can be “sent back” to the drawing board if problems occur!
separate education and outreach activities:
tutorials, information for designers, quicktips, guidelines
some of those guidelines, like WCAG, are part of legislation in a number of countries!

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Example: international text

Leading the Web to its Full Potential…
Duent la Web al seu ple potencial…
Het Web tot zijn volle potentieel ontwikkelen…
Amener le Web vers son plein potentiel…
Alle Möglichkeiten des Web erschließen…
Οδηγώντας τον παγκόμιο ιστό στο μέγιστο των δυνατοτήτων του…
Hogy kihasználhassuk a Web nyújtotta összes lehetőséget…
वेब की सम्पूर्ण क्षमता के उपयोग की दिशा में अग्रणी…
Sviluppare al massimo il potenziale del Web…
引发网络的全部潜能…
웹의 모든 잠재력을 이끌어 내기 위하여…
Levando a Web em direcção ao seu potencial màximo…
Pаскрывая весь потенциал Сети…
Guiando la web hacia su máximo potencial…
Se till att Webben når sin fulla potential…
Ohjaamassa Webin kehittymistä täyteen mittaansa…
Webの可能性を最大限に導き出すために⋮
…‫ﻹﻳﺼﺎل اﻟﺸﺒﻜﺔ اﻟﻤﻌﻠﻮﻣﺎﺗﻴﺔ إﻟﻲﺄﻗﺼﻰ إﻣﻜﺎﻧﻴﺎﺗﻬﺎ‬
…‫להוביל את הרשת למיצוי הפוטנציאל שלה‬
Ivan Herman, W3C
 Why Web Standards are Important...

Example: international text (cont)

One would think that this is only an issue of character set (e.g., Unicode)
That is not the case:

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 Why Web Standards are Important...

The mobile web…

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

What is “mobile”?
Currently W3C concentrates on mobile/cell phones and
network aware PDA-s
but a workshop on Ubiquitous Web took place earlier this year!
Question: what does W3C contribute to this environment?

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Characteristics of mobile
Extremely dynamic market
Big business in Europe and Asia, with US catching up fast
extremely dynamic market: ≈800M units sold in 2005, 63% of installed phones are Web capable (est.)
Potentially huge number of users
40 Million new users per year in China alone!
future: one PC per family, but one (or more!) mobile per person…
Potentially huge number of users in developing countries (where, for many people, mobile is the only gateway
to the Web/Internet!)

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Mobile web usage is growing (1)

Source: Nokia study, 2005 — Smartphones — Singapore, Germany, UK

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Mobile web usage is growing (2)

T–Mobile Web’n’Walk (a Web portal)
330 page views per month per user
489% increase in data volume per user
199% increase in data access (excl. SMS)
source: Opera, April 2006
BBC
number of requests to mobile content doubled in 2005
approaching 250 million/day
28% of mobile user only access BBC content from mobile phones, not from PC
source: BBC, November 2005

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

It is multipolar World
Variety of hardware architectures
Nokia, HP, Samsung, Palm, Motorola, DoCoMo, Sharp, SonyEricsson, KDDI, Sony, Dell, Sagem, Fujitsu, …
they represent different architectures, processors, displays, user interface styles, …
Operating systems evenly spread the field
proprietary, Symbian, PalmOS, Windows Mobile/CE, Linux, …
none of them dominates!
Thriving software industry for all variants

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

A World of varieties

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Where are we?

But… we are still at the beginning
systems and application software not always mature yet
infrastructure under constant development (eg, network)
more simplicity is needed for average user
Standardization is (even more) important!

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Standardization is (even more) important!

Source: T-Mobile

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

The players
Lots of hardware and software vendors (of course)
Two main industry consortia outside W3C:
Open Mobile Alliance (OMA):
integrated some older consortia (WAP Forum, SyncML Initiative, …)
specifies interoperable technical specification for Mobile devices
3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)
specifies technical specification for 3rd Generation GSM networks
roughly: 3GPP is the radio, OMA is the application level
but there are overlaps; they try to cooperate and synchronize

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Position of W3C
OMA and 3GPP often integrate existing technologies (when available and possible)
only if the technology does not exist, do they define it themselves
W3C’s expertise lies in the development of the basic Web architecture
W3C provides already a number of “building blocks”; these are integrated in 3GPP/OMA specifications
Bottomline: there is good cooperation among W3C, OMA, and 3GPP

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Example: XHTML/CSS
XHTML Basic: a “minimized” profile of XHTML
no frames, scripting; only simple tables (no colgroup, tbody/thead/tfoot,
justification in cells)
had an early adoption for WAP 2
CSS Mobile: under development
Important for simple devices
For higher end devices, XHTML Basic may not be that relevant any
more…
there are browsers that can manage XHTML 1.1+CSS

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Example: SVG
SVG has two “Mobile profiles”: Tiny and Basic
Newer phones come with SVG built in (122 different types end of June 2006)
some Web Browsers have SVG Tiny built in (Opera, NetFront, …)
W3C is working on SVG 1.2 Tiny (in strong synchrony with 3GPP)
SVG Mobile becomes the vector graphics tool for Mobile!

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Example: XForms
XForms aims at an enhancement of traditional HTML forms
XForms (full) is a W3C Recommendation
XForms Basic should become a Rec later this year
e.g., very restricted requirements on XML Schemas

(courtesy of solidapp.com)

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

W3C’s Mobile Web Initiative (MWI)

“Making Web access from a mobile device as simple, easy and
convenient as Web access from a desktop device”

Complements the work of OMA and 3GPP and the work done elsewhere at W3C
Launched in May 2005 with a separate set of directed sponsorship
The general approach:
solve interoperability and usability issues for end users and content providers
not geared at new technology
explain how to use existing technology and improve implementations

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Mobile Web Best Practices working group

Audience: Web content providers/Web developers
Issue: how to make Web content work on mobile devices?
rules to follow
things to look out for

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Best practices
Studied existing “tips and tricks” (W3C Accessibility, iMode, Opera, Openwave, Nokia,…)
60 “Best Practices”; examples:
thematic consistency/“One Web”
no table for layout, no spacers-GIFs, no frames
screen estate constraints: small top navigation, avoid large graphics
has an overview of the typical current set of devices
keep URI-s for sites short
scrolling should be in one direction
…
Close-to-final release issued last week!

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Device Description working group

Issue: how do I reliably find out the technical characteristics of a device?
currently: all providers make their own testing
Device description needed for content adaptation
Ongoing Work
“landscape” document: survey of existing technology
“ecosystem” document: understand who does what and why
Probable future work: shared, open device description database

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 Why Web Standards are Important...

Potential future works at MWI

“MobileOK” validator
Device Description Database
Test suites
Training
…

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 Why Web Standards are Important...

Semantic Web…

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 Why Web Standards are Important...

Problems leading to the Semantic Web…

Tasks often require to combine data on the Web:
hotel and travel infos may come from different sites
searches in different digital libraries
various databases within an organization (eg, after company mergers)
etc.
Humans combine these information easily, even if different terminologies, terms,
languages, etc, are used…
Machines have real problems with that!

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Example: automatic airline reservation

Your automatic airline reservation
knows about your preferences
builds up knowledge base using your past
can combine the local knowledge with remote services:
airline preferences
dietary requirements
calendaring
etc
It communicates with remote information (i.e., on the Web!)
(M. Dertouzos: The Unfinished Revolution)

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Example: data(base) integration

Databases are very different in structure, in content
Lots of applications require managing several databases
after company mergers
combination of administrative data for e-Government
biochemical, genetic, pharmaceutical research
etc.
Most of these data are now on the Web (though not necessarily public yet)

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

What is needed?
Data should be available on the Web for further processing by other machines and
programs
Data should be possibly merged, connected, combined on a Web scale
Sometimes, data may describe other data (e.g, using metadata)…
… but sometimes the data is to be exchanged by itself, like a calendar or travel preferences
Machines may also need to reason about that data
The “Semantic Web” is an infrastructure extending the current Web for the interchange and
the integration of data on the Web,

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

What is needed (technically)?

To make data machine processable, we need:
unambiguous names for resources (that may also bind data to real world objects): URI-s
a common data model to access, connect, describe the resources: RDF
access to that data: SPARQL
define common vocabularies, ontologies: RDFS, OWL, SKOS
…

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

RDF triples
We said “interchange” and “connection” of data… ie, resources have to be connected
But a simple connection is not enough… it should be named somehow
a connection from me to my calendar is not the same as the connection from me to my CV (even if all of these
are on the Web)
the first connection should somehow say “myCalendar”', the second “myCV”
Hence the RDF Triples: a labelled connection between two resources

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

RDF triples (cont.)

(http://www.ivan-herman.net, http://…/myCalendar, http://…/calendar)

This triple connects my home site with my calendar, using a myCalendar “predicate”
note that URIs are also used to name the connection itself
RDF is a general model for such triples
… with machine readable formats (RDF/XML, Turtle, n3, RXR, …), where RDF/XML is the “official” format

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

A simple RDF example

<rdf:Description rdf:about="http://www.ivan-herman.net">
<foaf:name>Ivan</foaf:name>
<abc:myCalendar rdf:resource="http://…/myCalendar"/>
<foaf:surname>Herman</foaf:surname>
</rdf:Description>

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

URI-s play a fundamental role

Anybody can create (meta)data on any resource on the Web
e.g., the same SVG file could be annotated through other terms
semantics is added to existing Web resources via URI-s
URI-s make it possible to link (via properties) data with one another
URI-s ground RDF into the Web
information can be retrieved using existing tools
this makes the “Semantic Web”, well… “Semantic Web”

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

URI-s: merging
It becomes easy to merge data
e.g., applications may merge the SVG annotations
Merge can be done because statements refer to the same URI-s
nodes with identical URI-s are considered identical
Merging is a very powerful feature of RDF
metadata may be defined by several (independent) parties…
…and combined by an application
one of the areas where RDF is much handier than pure XML in many applications

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

What merge can do...

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

RDF may not be enough…

Creating data and using it from a program works, provided the program knows what terms
to use!
We used terms like:
foaf:name, abc:myCalendar, foaf:surname, …
etc
Are they all known? Are they all correct? (it is a bit like defining record types for a
database)

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Possible issues to handle

What are the possible terms?
“is the set of data terms known to the program?”
Are the properties used correctly?
“do they make sense for the resources?”
Can a program reason about some terms? Eg:
“if «A» is left of «B» and «B» is left of «C», is «A» left of «C»?”
obviously true for humans, not obvious for a program …
… programs should be able to deduce such statements
If somebody else defines a set of terms: are they the same?
clearly an issue in an international context

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Ontologies
The Semantic Web needs a support of ontologies:

“defines the concepts and relationships used to describe and represent an area of
knowledge”

We need a Web Ontologies Language to define:

the terminology used in a specific context
possible constraints on properties
the logical characteristics of properties
the equivalence of terms across ontologies
etc
This is done by RDFS (RDF Schemas) and OWL (Web Ontology Language)

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

The newest element in the puzzle: SPARQL

A query language for RDF
RDF is a graph… SPARQL is based on graph patterns (i.e.: small graphs with unbound
variables)

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Simple SPARQL example

SELECT ?cat ?val # note: not ?x!

WHERE { ?x rdf:value ?val. ?x category ?cat }

Returns: [["Total Members",100],["Total Members",200],…,["Full

Members",10],…]

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

SPARQL usage in practice

Locally, i.e., bound to a programming environments
Remotely, e.g., over the network or into a database
separate documents define the protocol and the result format
SPARQL Protocol for RDF with HTTP and SOAP bindings
SPARQL Results XML Format
there is also a JSON binding (though this is not a W3C document…)
There are already a number of applications, demos, etc.,

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

SPARQL usage in practice (cont.)

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Some SW application examples

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Example: portals
Vodafone's Live Mobile Portal
search application (e.g. ringtone, game, picture) using RDF
page views per download decreased 50%
ringtone up 20% in 2 months
Sun’s SwordFish: public queries for support, handbooks, etc, go through an
internal RDF engine for White Paper Collections and System Handbook
collections
Nokia has a somewhat similar support portal

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Example: data integration

Semantic integration of different data sources
RDF/RDFS (possibly with OWL and/or SKOS) based vocabularies as an “interlingua”
among system components
Many different projects and R&D on this: Boeing, MITRE Corp., Elsevier, EU Projects like
Sculpteur and Artiste, national projects like MuseoSuomi, …

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Example: Antibodies Demo

Scenario: find the known antibodies for a protein in a specific species
Combine four different data sources
Use SPARQL as an integration tool

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Example: improved search via ontology:

GoPubMed
Improved search on top of pubmed.org
Search results are ranked using the specialized ontologies
Extra search terms are generated and terms are highlighted
Importance of domain specific ontologies for search improvement

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Further information
More information about W3C:
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/

Contact the Australia Office:

http://www.w3c.org.au/

Mail me:
[email protected]

Ivan Herman, W3C

 Why Web Standards are Important...

Thanks you for your attention!

Ivan Herman, W3C