On December 13, 2007, Opera Software filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commission. Opera's press release states:

The complaint describes how Microsoft is abusing its dominant position by tying its browser, Internet Explorer, to the Windows operating system and by hindering interoperability by not following accepted Web standards. Opera has requested the Commission to take the necessary actions to compel Microsoft to give consumers a real choice and to support open Web standards in Internet Explorer.

In this article, xhtml.com interviews Håkon Wium Lie, Chief Technology Officer at Opera Software, regarding the Web standards aspect of Opera's complaint to the European Commission.

CSS 3 is arguably the most eagerly anticipated specification in the works at W3C. CSS 3 promises to make it easier to create page layout and to support formatting that is currently only achievable through hacks. In this article, xhtml.com interviews Bert Bos, chair of the CSS Working Group at W3C, about the next release of the CSS specification and how past design decisions are influencing the future of CSS. This interview offers a rare opportunity to learn more about the inner workings and thought processes of the CSS Working Group at W3C.

An easy-to-read CSS reference with examples and illustrations.

Does the Web need fixing? The Web is about 17 years old. For its first 10 years, Web technology evolved at breakneck speed. But for the last 7 years, Web technology hasn't changed much at all. Is this a problem? There are clear benefits to having a stable development environment, but is Web technology stable or stale? Without innovation, will the Web suffer the same fate as any technology that becomes outdated because it fails to keep pace with users' needs?

This article looks at some of the problems with current Web technology and asks a cross section of stakeholders in Web technology to share their thoughts on how to address current challenges the Web faces, in order to transition to the Web of the future.

On April 5, many Web designers will unite for a common goal to promote Web standards by removing CSS from their Web sites for a day. The world will get to see their Web sites the way search engines and users of assistive technology see them - free from formatting. Whether you participate in CSS Naked Day this year or not, this is a great opportunity to review and improve the markup and content on your Web site.

A new version of HTML is in the works, called X/HTML 5. xhtml.com was invited to post a series of questions to the X/HTML 5 team on their public mailing list. The responses, republished below, came from Ian Hickson, editor of the X/HTML 5 specification.

For the last several years, W3C has been working on a new markup language for the Web called XHTML 2. It's an ambitious effort aimed to make the Web more usable and accessible for people of all abilities and using all types of devices. In this article, xhtml.com interviews Steven Pemberton, chair of the HTML Working Group at W3C, about XHTML 2.

The competition to become the next markup language for the Web is heating up. This article takes a look at what's cool and what's uncool about the competing technologies.

All users should be able to enjoy Web site content and services. This is a basic and widely recognized principle, but we sometimes forget that different users have different needs. This article by Marco Bertoni is the first of a series that will discuss how Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) can be used to make Web sites more accessible. Subsequent articles will delve deeper and cover more advanced topics. Marco is an Italian Accessibility Specialist and IT consultant, and a W3C WCAG Working Group member for the International Webmasters Association.

In 1994, five years after inventing the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The mission of W3C is "To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web." Though W3C has its detractors, most agree that the W3C today enjoys the respect and support of a wide range of key industries, organizations and individuals. In the early days however, support for W3C was very guarded or not forthcoming at all.

In the 1990s, concerns that Berners-Lee wielded disproportionate power within W3C were accompanied by worries about the closed nature of W3C deliberations and the composition of its membership. In 1998, an important investigative report on W3C was written by veteran journalist Simson Garfinkel for the prestigious "Technology Review" (also MIT). The piece was entitled "The Web's Unelected Government" and reaction to it revealed that many shared a mistrust of W3C or simply did not know what it was up to. Technology Review editor-in-chief , John Benditt referred to W3C as the "little-known group...based right down the street...on the MIT campus". He questioned the impartiality of W3C members who "...have a financial stake in the Internet-including such giants as Microsoft and Sun", and warned that W3C would need to change its shadowy nature by "opening up its membership and letting the sun shine in."

XHTML was created by the HTML Working Group at W3C, whose mission is to "fulfill the promise of XML by applying XHTML to a wide variety of platforms." It is therefore XML that is driving the development of XHTML, and developers need to understand the connection between these two technologies.

HTML is a good markup language that has served the Web well. At a certain stage however, innovations planned for the Web required more of HTML than it could give. Thus, in 2000, XML rules were added to HTML, to beef it up. The result, XHTML 1.0, retains almost all of HTML 4.01. For example, from a markup perspective, all the elements and attributes remain the same. This continuity from HTML into XHTML is key, because it means that, when written correctly, XHTML is backward-compatible. So XHTML can be served as HTML to Web browsers.

Media types (sometimes called MIME types or content types) are a classification system used to identify files commonly found on Web sites. Media types are crucial to the functioning of the Web, because when a client computer requests a Web page from the server, the client computer uses media types to tell the server what type of files the client computer will accept. Conversely, when the server sends files back to the client computer, the server uses media types to identify what type of files it is sending back. This information tells the client computer software (for example a Web browser) how to render or process the files that it receives.

Media types were developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to help the Internet work efficiently and consistently. Software vendors that produce Web servers and Web browser have widely adopted media types, which are now the primary method for classifying files used on Web sites.

Common examples of media types include text/html (used to identify HTML files) and image/jpeg (used to identify JPEG image files), but there are also media types for multi-media content such as music or video. As discussed in this article, media types also play a key role in determining how Web browsers process XHTML.

This reference is a best-practice approach, based on XHTML 1.0 Strict / XHTML 1.1.