A history of web standards - HTML5 and CSS3 - page 431

W3C standards process in 1998
In May 1998, the W3C formalized its standards process with the publication of
the document “World Wide Web Consortium Process.” It listed three stages a
standard had to go through:
❂

Working Draft (WD) — The proposed standard may go through several
drafts. Once the standard has stabilized, the editor issues a Last Call for
comments, and then the standard can move on to the next stage.

Proposed Recommendation (PR) — The Proposed Recommendation stage
lasts at least four weeks. A PR is voted on by W3C members. After the vote,
the standard is either returned to the Working Draft stage or, perhaps with
modifications, advances to be a full recommendation.

❂

W3C Recommendation (R) — A Recommendation indicates that consensus
has been reached among W3C Members and the specification is appropriate
for widespread use. After the standard has become a Recommendation, only
minor revisions are allowed to correct minor errors or clarify issues.

❂

From web pages to web applications
As you've just seen, HTML was originally designed for sharing docu-
ments. The only interactive elements in HTML 1.0 were the hyperlinks
between documents. HTML 2.0 introduced forms, which allowed users
to send information back to the server. Shortly after that, Netscape
introduced JavaScript that enabled web pages to respond to user
actions without going back to the server at all. In this section, you'll see
how the addition of client-side interactivity turned out to be a game-
changing move for the web.

Although the early versions of JavaScript were limited, it caught the
imagination of web developers. It was initially developed by Netscape,
but was copied by Microsoft and soon became standardized under the
umbrella of Ecma International as ECMAS cript in 1997 (these days,
though, nearly everyone still refers to it as JavaScript ).

JavaScript can update browser content through the Document Object
Model (DOM) . The DOM represented the HTML document as a tree
of objects, so you'll frequently hear it referred to as a DOM tree . With
the release of Netscape Navigator (now Communicator) 4.0 and IE
4.0, the DOM became a complete interface, and developers were able