World Wide Web Consortium

W3C is an international consortium which prescribes standards for the web world. This is to prevent confusion when adopting new technologies among organizations throughout the world. W3C has offices around the world and works keeping in mind the regional distinctions before prescribing the standards. The World Wide Web is an interesting place where exciting things happen every day, if not every second. New technologies are found and major inventions are done in breakneck speed. But have you ever wondered how the WebPages are consistent without major confusions? Well, there is W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) to do this. W3C is an international consortium (group) which is involved in developing guidelines and standards for the Web throughout the world. It was primarily created to find a common ground in adopting new standards. W3C staff design technologies and guidelines keeping in mind the diversity of people, language, hardware, software, and cultures. What is more, they prevent people from coming up with different versions of HTML and agreeing to standard components and principles. The standards published by the W3C are called recommendations. These recommendations pass through five stages: Working draft, Last Call Working Draft, Candidate Recommendation, and Proposed Recommendation. The recommendations are not compulsory and the manufacturers may or may not follow them.

However, to get a W3C-compliant label, it is mandatory for the manufacturers to follow the recommendations. W3C-compliant label is an indication that the website owner had implemented the very best among the designs for his site. It shows the commitment of the owner in having a website conforming to the web standards. The web designing aspect of W3C standard follows the same recommendation since it is the basic layout of any web envision. In a Wiki style – a web designing is an intent to create a website that presents content to the web end user in the form of web pages once requested. This is the best definition of web design I have ever found on internet. I even don’t mind if it’s copied all across the web platform since it is the standard statement and aptly follows the standards led by W3C.

Acceptance of XHTML, XML, CSS and DHTML by W3C has really made web today the most dynamic deliverable media today. Web designers take it as a way of enhancing websites with all the innovation and trendy techniques. Now, various web designing companies are getting encouraged by the standards led by W3C and with passage of time the web designs always get into some or other new web creation parameters meeting all the standards and guidelines of W3C. It not only benefits them but it also avoids any kind of web fragmentation or other anti-web issues. W3C is an open forum and in addition to maintaining the standards, also involves itself in activities ranging from education, outreach, and developing software. It was founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who also invented the World Wide Web, in October 1994 at the laboratory of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

It has many regional offices around the world and is administered jointly by the CSAIL (MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory) ERCIM (European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics) and Keio University. CSAIL is in the USA, ERCIM in France and Keio University is located in Japan. The regional offices, too, play a major role. They are instrumental in promoting W3C technologies around the world in different local languages. W3C are monetarily supported by research grants, public and private funding, membership fees and support programs. The members do not include the public, but only organizations (both profit and non-profit), universities, businesses and government entities.

The membership is reviewed and approved by the W3C, which though having guidelines do not rely on them solely for the final process of selection. The membership cost depends on the type and also the location (country) of the company. W3C is also working to make the web accessible to everyone. It wants all the people in the world to reap the benefits of the web world by- communicating freely, doing business with each other, sharing the knowledge and improving their lives. . Hence, in recent years, W3C has been investing more in the expansion of the web irrespective of the language, location and culture. A program called ‘Mobile Web Initiative’ plans to make the web accessible from any device be it mobiles, interactive televisions, or other electronic appliances. In a nutshell, W3C has the vision to uphold the long-term growth of the web world with consensus on the web technologies.