W3C stands for World Wide Web Consortium. The forum was pioneered by Tim Berners-Lee at the prestigious MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab at Florida. It was executed jointly under the aegis of Keio University in Japan and European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) in France. W3C serves as a universal platform to ascertain conformity, congruence and compatibility between web vendors across the globe. It works to standardize a set of fundamental ethics and knowledge values pertaining to the internet and is mutually agreed upon by all the players of the internet industry. W3C serves as a yardstick against which the features pertaining to web-technology will be followed upon globally. A few of the web features recommended by the W3C are
•W3C is an endeavor to develop knowledge pertaining to Web and Internet. W3C as a system of guidelines help this knowledge move systematically in a unidirectional order instead of getting lost to diverse scattering forces.
With markets turning customer focused, attention has now shifted towards making web technology up graded and is attuned to Web 2.0. The W3C has improvised the existing technology components so as to make the web page more user-friendly and interactive. It is increasingly being adapted to cater and serve user-user. The content is provided by the user and availed by the user. The user can be an entrepreneur, a student, a professional or a mere amateur desirous of contributing a concept or information by publishing it on the net. Another user at the other end will make use of it or dismiss as per his need and requirement. User generated content contributes as well as shares information between user-user. Webmaster plays no role in this interface.
• Attachable software modules that help editing the web page when imbued in the website in the form of message boards, weblogs, mass mailers, content management systems, wikis help users put across their idea. There may be an idea which may have the potential to translate into big business and revolutionize the existing scheme of thing.
• Use of audio/visual digital files in the form of Pod casts, RSS feeds, social book markings when incorporated in websites have helped social information travel faster to the end-users.
• XML the extensible mark up language. Its tags can be designed by the end users making it more user-friendly and interactive in nature. XML is a universal database structure that all the major databases support worldwide. It allows structured data to be shared across different data bases through the mediation of the internet.
• The W3C calls for the use of Ajax based framework in web application development. Ajax stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML and is instrumental in creating interactive web applications. The relevance of Ajax is that it makes web pages to respond better to the browser by displaying only the relevant data instead of reloading the entire web page every time the users apply for a change. Since total page is not loaded, Ajax helps reduce unwanted burden on the net. Only that data is retrieved from the web which is related to the control. Rest of the web page stays as it is. This enhances the functionality, usability, speed and interactivity of the web page making it more dynamic in its course.
