W3C posts - Microsoft

Web standards vet marches Microsoft to the front lines (Q&A)

You might think developing technology standards is plodding, bureaucratic tedium compared to something like the frenzy of smartphone innovation.

But you'd be wrong, at least in the case of Paul Cotton, who leads Microsoft's involvement in the important and often fractious world of Web standards. Web standards are hot -- and hotly contested.

Cotton, an even-keeled Canadian, discovered a passion for standards more than 20 years ago when figuring out how to digitize airplane maintenance manuals. He's comfortable with the contradictory motives of standards groups: fierce competition one moment and gentlemanly cooperation the next.

It's a … Read more

W3C: Microsoft anti-tracking idea worth exploring

The World Wide Web Consortium has approved and published a new browser privacy feature from Microsoft, according to a new IE blog post, opening up for discussion and debate whether the feature should become a Web standard.

Found in the recent release candidate of Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft's new Tracking Protection Lists offer IE users a type of "do not track" feature to help them block advertisers and Web sites from tracking and capturing certain data. The feature works via lists of Web site domains that are downloaded to the browser. If a domain name is on … Read more

Microsoft touts new IE9 test, seeks Web standards

Microsoft released a second "platform preview" version of Internet Explorer 9 on Wednesday with faster JavaScript and better Web standards compliance--plus an argument for how future Web technology should develop.

Central to the second IE9 preview (download) is progress toward matching rivals in SunSpider, a speed test of Web-based JavaScript programs, and Acid3, a test of adherence to some Web technologies. On the first, Microsoft improved from 590 to 473 milliseconds; on the second, from 55 to 68 out of a possible 100. But there's more to the story than benchmarks.

The new platform preview, arriving seven … Read more

Microsoft sponsors new Web font standard

With a surprise boost from Microsoft, the promise of rich typography on the Web just got a big step closer to reality.

The software company's involvement emerged Monday with sponsorship of a newer effort at the World Wide Web Consortium to standardize Web-based fonts with technology called the Web Open Font Format (WOFF). It's a fresh indicator of Microsoft's serious engagement with new Web standards--and it's a big boost for designers' attempts to stretch the Web beyond just the few typefaces that today can be expected to be already installed on people's computers.

It's … Read more

Microsoft bolsters Web-accessible data plan

Microsoft is putting some meat on the bones of its plan to make information that's stuck in databases reachable with the same standards used to retrieve Web pages.

At its Mix conference this week, Microsoft touted an interface called the Open Data Protocol, or OData. Specifically, the company announced an OData software developer kit to let programmers more easily use it and said it wants to standardize OData.

What fortuitous timing. Microsoft listed the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and World Wide Web Constortium (W3C) as groups where it would like to see this standardization, and the latter of … Read more