The+W3C

= W3C (The World Wide Web Consortium) =

toc "The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community that develops open standards to ensure the long-term growth of the web." Led by Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee and CEO Jeffrey Jaffe, it has 322 member organizations.

media type="youtube" key="PLk5TbGmpjg" height="315" width="420" March 13, 2009: World Wide Web turns 20.

Background
The W3C was founded by Berners-Lee in October, 1994, at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology's Laboratory for Computer Science, in collaboration with CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research). Its main function is to create and develop web standards. Without such a body, the web would be totally chaotic. With all the hundreds of millions of people and organizations creating web content, on diffierent devices and computers, with their own cataloging systems and different kinds of software, some of it proprietary, how are they all able to communicate with each other over the Internet? The W3C's open standards have made it possible. It has created all major programs for the web, including HTML, @XML, XSL, PNG, DOM, VoiceXML, CSS, and @XHTML. Berners-Lee led the way in this effort.

In 1989, Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web and first coined the term. He wrote the first web server (httpd), the first browser, and the first version of HTML (Facts). Though it has been modified over the years, HTML is still the standard mark-up language for web pages.

Mission
"The W3C mission is to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure the long-term growth of the Web " (Mission). Long term growth requires international agreement on standards and protocols. The W3C has created the common language for computers on the web to communicate and share data. Their goal is to make the web available to everyone, "whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability " (Mission).

Open Web
"W3C standards define an Open Web Platform for application development that has the unprecedented potential to enable developers to build rich interactive experiences, powered by vast data stores, that are available on any device. Although the boundaries of the platform continue to evolve, industry leaders speak nearly in unison about how HTML5 will be the cornerstone for this platform. But the full strength of the platform relies on many more technologies that W3C and its partners are creating, including CSS, SVG, WOFF, the Semantic Web stack, XML, and a variety of APIs" (Standards).

**References**
Current Members.

Facts about W3C.

Standards.

The W3C homepage.

W3C mission. W3C (The World Wide Web Consortium)