The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of XMLHttpRequest. The XMLHttpRequest specification defines an API that provides scripted client functionality for transferring data between a client and a server. It is the ECMAScript HTTP API. Comments are welcome through 16 December. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Web Applications Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of File API. This specification provides an API for representing file objects in web applications, as well as programmatically selecting them and accessing their data. This API is designed to be used in conjunction with other APIs and elements on the web platform, notably: XMLHttpRequest (e.g. with an overloaded send() method for File objects), postMessage, DataTransfer (part of the drag and drop API defined in [HTML5,]) and Web Workers. Additionally, it should be possible to programmatically obtain a list of files from the input element [HTML5] when it is in the File Upload state. These kinds of behaviors are defined in the appropriate affiliated specifications. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: The widget Interface. This specification defines an application programming interface (API) for widgets that provides, amongst other things, functionality for accessing a widget's metadata and persistently storing data. Comments are welcome through 08 December. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Math Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of XML Entity definitions for Characters. It is difficult to write science fluently if scientific characters are not available for use. It is difficult to read science if corresponding glyphs are not available for presentation. In the majority of cases it is preferable to store characters directly as Unicode character data or as XML numeric character references. However, in some environments it is more convenient to use the ASCII input mechanism provided by XML entity references. Many entity names are in common use, and this specification aims to provide standard mappings to Unicode for each of these names. It introduces no names that have not already been used in earlier specifications. Comments are welcome through 08 December. Learn more about the Math Activity.

The Mobile Web For Social Development (MW4D) Interest Group has published a Group Note of Mobile Web for Social Development Roadmap. This document describes some of the current challenges of deploying development-oriented services on mobile phones. It suggests the most promising directions for lowering barriers to developing, deploying and accessing services on mobile phones and thereby creating an enabling environment for more social-oriented services to appear. Learn more about the Mobile Web Initiative Activity.