From http://www.w3schools.com (Copyright Refsnes Data)

The World Wide Web Consortium

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) creates the WWW standards.

W3C's mission is to lead the Web to its full potential, which it does by developing specifications, guidelines, software, and tools.

The World Wide Web Consortium

From Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, director and founder of the World Wide Web consortium:

"The dream behind the Web is of a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information."

W3C

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), founded in 1994, is an international consortium dedicated to "lead the Web to its full potential".

W3C Stands for the World Wide Web Consortium
W3C was created in October 1994
W3C was created by Tim Berners-Lee
W3C was created by the Inventor of the Web
W3C is organized as a Member Organization
W3C is working to Standardize the Web
W3C creates and maintains WWW Standards
W3C Standards are called W3C Recommendations

The most important work done by the W3C is the development of Web specifications (called "Recommendations") that describe communication protocols (like HTML and XML) and other building blocks of the Web.

As developers, especially when creating educational Web sites, we can help turn this dream into reality. The most important W3C standards are:

You can read more about W3C in our W3C tutorial.

W3C Resources at W3Schools

Introduction to W3C
This section explains what the W3C is, how it works, and how the Web is standardized.

W3C Process
The W3C standards approval process includes up to 7 different steps. This section explains the W3C standardizing process.

W3C HTML
HTML is the lingua franca for publishing hypertext on the World Wide Web. This section summarizes the HTML activities at the W3C.

W3C XHTML
XHTML 1.0 is the latest version of HTML. This section summarizes the XHTML activities at the W3C.

W3C XML
XML was designed to describe, store, carry and exchange data. XML 1.0 is the latest version of XML. This section summarizes the XML activities at the W3C.

W3C CSS
Style sheets describe how documents are displayed, pronounced, or printed. W3C supports two types of style sheets: CSS and XSL. This section summarizes the CSS activities at the W3C.

W3C XSL
Style sheets describe how documents are displayed, pronounced, or printed. W3C supports two types of style sheets: CSS and XSL. This section summarizes the XSL activities at the W3C.

W3C DOM
The Document Object Model (DOM) is a platform and language neutral Application Programming Interface (API) that allows programs to access and update the content, structure, and style of a document. This section summarizes the DOM activities at the W3C.

W3C Other
This section summarizes some other important and interesting activities at W3C.