The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organiza

tion for the World Wide Web (abbreviated WWW or W3).

Founded and currently led by Tim Berners-Lee,[3] the consortium is made up of me
mber organizations which maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working tog
ether in the development of standards for the World Wide Web. As of 24 May 2014,
the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has 385 members.[2]
W3C also engages in education and outreach, develops software and serves as an o
pen forum for discussion about the Web.
Contents [hide]
1 History
2 Specification Maturation
2.1 Working Draft (WD)
2.2 Candidate Recommendation (CR)
2.3 Proposed Recommendation (PR)
2.4 W3C Recommendation (REC)
2.5 Later Revisions (WD)(NOTES)
2.6 Certification
3 Administration
4 Membership
5 Criticism
6 Standards
7 References
8 External links
History[edit]
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 Sci
ence (MIT/LCS) with support from the European Commission and the Defense Advance
d Research Projects Agency (DARPA),[3] which had pioneered the Internet and its
predecessor ARPANET.
W3C tries to enforce compatibility and agreement among industry members in the a
doption of new standards defined by the W3C. Incompatible versions of HTML are o
ffered by different vendors, causing inconsistency in how Web pages are displaye
d. The consortium tries to get all those vendors to implement a set of core prin
ciples and components which are chosen by the consortium.
It was originally intended that CERN host the European branch of W3C; however, C
ERN wished to focus on particle physics, not information technology. In April 19
95 the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation (INRIA)
became the European host of W3C, with Keio University becoming the Japanese bran
ch in September 1996. Starting in 1997, W3C created regional offices around the
world; as of September 2009, it has eighteen World Offices covering Australia, t
he Benelux countries (Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium), Brazil, China, Finl
and, Germany, Austria, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, South K
orea, Morocco, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom and Ireland.[
4]
In October 2012, W3C convened a community of large Web players and publishers to
establish a MediaWiki wiki that seeks to document open Web standards called Web
Platform and WebPlatform Docs.
Specification Maturation[edit]
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 S
pecification are known as Levels, and are denoted by the first integer in the ti
tle (e.g. CSS3 = Level 3). Subsequent Revisions on each Level are denoted by an

integer following a decimal point (e.g. CSS2.1 = Revision 1).

The W3C Standard Formation Process is defined within the W3C Process Document, o
utlining Four Maturity Levels that each new Standard or Recommendation must prog
ress through:[5]
Working Draft (WD)[edit]
After enough content has been gathered from 'Editor Drafts' and discussion, it m
ay 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 virtuall
y anyone is accepted, though no promises are made with regard to action on any p
articular element of said commentary.[5]
At this stage, the standard document may likely have significant differences fro
m its final form. As such, any who implement WD standards should be ready to sig
nificantly modify their implementations as the standard matures.[5]
Candidate Recommendation (CR)[edit]
A candidate recommendation is a version of the standard that is more firm than t
he WD. At this point, the group responsible for the standard is satisfied that t
he standard does what is needed of it. The purpose of the CR is to elicit aid fr
om the development community as to how implementable the standard is.[5]
The standard document may change further, but at this point, significant feature
s are mostly locked. The design of those features can still change due to feedba
ck from implementors.[5]
Proposed Recommendation (PR)[edit]
A proposed recommendation is the version of the standard that has passed the pri
or two levels. The users of said standard have had their say, and the implemento
rs 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.
[5]
While this step is important, it rarely causes any significant changes to a stan
dard as it passes to the next phase.[5]
Both Candidates and Proposals may enter "Last Call" to signal that any further f
eedback must be provided expeditiously.
W3C Recommendation (REC)[edit]
This is the most mature stage of development. At this point, the standard has un
dergone extensive review and testing, under both theoretical and practical condi
tions. The standard is now endorsed by the W3C as a standard, indicating its rea
diness for deployment within its problem domain, and encouraging more widespread
support among implementors and authors.[5]
Recommendations can sometimes be implemented incorrectly, partially, or not at a
ll, but many standards define two or more levels of conformance that developers
must follow if they wish to label their product as W3C-compliant.[5]
Later Revisions (WD)(NOTES)[edit]
A Recommendation may be updated or extended by separately-published, non-technic
al Errata or Editor Drafts until enough substantial edits accumulate for produci
ng a new edition or level of the Recommendation. Additionally, the W3C publishes
various kinds of informative Notes which are to be used as a reference.[5]
Certification[edit]
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 t

o start such a program owing to the risk of creating more drawbacks for the comm
unity than benefits.[5]
Administration[edit]
The Consortium is jointly administered by the MIT Computer Science and Artificia
l Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL, located in Stata Center[6]) in the USA, the Eu
ropean Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) (in Sophia An
tipolis, France), Keio University (in Japan) and Beihang University (in China).
The W3C also has World Offices in sixteen regions around the world. The W3C Offi
ces work with their regional Web communities to promote W3C technologies in loca
l languages, broaden W3C's geographical base, and encourage international partic
ipation in W3C Activities.
W3C has a relatively small staff team, around 50 60 worldwide recently (as of 2010
).[7] The CEO of W3C as of Dec. 2010 is Jeffrey Jaffe,[8] former CTO of Novell.
The majority of standardization work is done by external experts in W3C's variou
s working groups.
Membership[edit]
The domain w3.org attracted at least 11 million visitors annually by 2008 accord
ing to a Compete.com study.[9]
The Consortium is governed by its membership. The list of members is available t
o the public.[2] Members include businesses, nonprofit organizations, universiti
es, governmental entities, and individuals.[10]
Membership requirements are transparent except for one requirement. An applicati
on for membership must be reviewed and approved by W3C. Many guidelines and requ
irements are stated in detail, but there is no final guideline about the process
or standards by which membership might be finally approved or denied.[11]
The cost of membership is given on a sliding scale, depending on the character o
f the organization applying and the country in which it is located.[12] Countrie
s are categorized by the World Bank's most recent grouping by GNI ("Gross Nation
al Income") per capita.[13]
Criticism[edit]
In 2012 and 2013, W3C started considering adding DRM-specific Encrypted Media Ex
tensions (EME) to HTML5, which was criticised as being against the openness, int
eroperability and vendor-neutrality that distinguished websites built using only
W3C standards from those requiring proprietary plug-ins like Flash.[14][15][16]
[17][18]
Standards[edit]
W3C/IETF Standards (over Internet protocol suite):
CGI
CSS
DOM
GRDDL
HTML
MathML
OWL
P3P
RDF
SISR
SKOS
SMIL
SOAP
SPARQL

SRGS
SSML
SVG
VoiceXML
XHTML
XHTML+Voice
XML
XML Events
XML Information Set
XML Schema
XPath
XQuery
XSL-FO
XSLT
WCAG
WSDL
XForms
References[edit]
Jump up ^ "W3C Invites Chinese Web Developers, Industry, Academia to Assume Grea
ter Role in Global Web Innovation". W3.org. 2013-01-20. Retrieved 2013-11-30.
^ Jump up to: a b c "World Wide Web Consortium
current Members". World Wide Web
Consortium. 29 March 2012. Retrieved 24 May 2014.
^ Jump up to: a b W3C (September 2009). "World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) About t
he Consortium". Retrieved 8 September 2009.
Jump up ^ Jacobs, Ian (June 2009). "W3C Offices". Retrieved 14 September 2009.
^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h i j k "World Wide Web Consortium | Development Pro
cess". W3.org. 2005-04-12. Retrieved 2012-04-03.
Jump up ^ "W3C Contact". W3.org. 2006-10-31. Retrieved 2012-04-03.
Jump up ^ "W3C people list". W3.org. Retrieved 2012-04-03.
Jump up ^ "W3C pulls former Novell CTO for CEO spot". Itworld.com. 2010-03-08. R
etrieved 2012-04-03.
Jump up ^ "W3C attracts 11m visitors online yearly". Siteanalytics.compete.com.
Retrieved 3 July 2010.
Jump up ^ W3C (2010). "Membership FAQ
W3C". Retrieved 7 August 2010.
Jump up ^ Jacobs, Ian (2008). "Join W3C". Retrieved 14 September 2008.
Jump up ^ W3C Membership Fee Calculator
Jump up ^ "World Bank Country Classification". Web.worldbank.org. Retrieved 3 Ju
ly 2010.
Jump up ^ Co