Content negotiation helps determine what form content should take, given the characteristics and preferences set on both the server and client side. This allow the same source data to be rendered in various ways, based on different access scenarios and available equipment.

• Composite Capability/Preference Profiles (CC/PP): Structure and Vocabularies - (W3C Working Draft as of 2002-01-02) description of device capabilities and user preferences that can be used to guide the adaptation of content presented to that device
• CC/PP Implementors Guide: Harmonization with Existing Vocabularies and Content Transformation Heuristics - (W3C Note as of 2002-01-02) describes how existing vocabularies for different classes of devices and user agents can be used in CC/PP components, and how to create schemas that encapsulate existing vocabularies
• CC/PP Implementors Guide: Privacy and Protocols - (W3C Working Draft as of 2002-01-02) gives implementors advice on how to protect the privacy of a CC/PP user, and outlines how this can be applied using P3P in HTTP with the CC/PP Exchange protocol
• Content Feature Schema for Internet Fax (V2) - (IETF RFC 2879, Obsoletes RFC 2531) profile of the media feature registration mechanisms for use in performing capability identification between extended Internet fax systems, G. Klyne, L. McIntyre, August 2000
• Identifying Composite Media Features - (IETF RFC 2938) describes an abbreviated format for a composite media feature set, based upon a hash of the feature expression describing that composite, G. Klyne, L. Masinter, September 2000
• Media Features for Display, Print, and Fax (IETF RFC 2534)defines some common media features for describing image resolution, size, color, and image representation methods that are common to web browsing, printing, and facsimile applications, L. Masinter, D. Wing, A. Mutz, K. Holtman, March 1999
• Media Feature Tag Registration Procedure - (IETF RFC 2506, Best Current Practice 31) defines a registration process and authority for media features, and a URI tree to enable sharing of media feature definitions without registration. K. Holtman, A. Mutz, T. Hardie, March 1999
• A Syntax for Describing Media Feature Sets - (IETF RFC 2533, Updated by RFC 2938) introduces and describes a syntax that can be used to define feature sets which are formed from combinations and relations involving individual media features, used to describe the media feature handling capabilities of message senders, recipients and file formats, G. Klyne, March 1999
• The Open Group Test Services for WAP User - concerned with capturing classes of device capabilities and preference information, including (but not restricted to) the hardware and software characteristics of the device as well as information about the network to which the device is connected, May 2001
• XML Media Types - (IETF RFC 3023, Obsoletes RFC 2376, Updates RFC 2048) standardizes five new media types (text/xml, application/xml, text/xml-external-parsed-entity, application/xml- external-parsed-entity, and application/xml-dtd) for use in exchanging network entities that are related to the Extensible Markup Language (XML) and standardizes a convention (using the suffix '+xml') for naming media types outside of these five types when those media types represent XML MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) entities, M. Murata, S. St.Laurent, D. Kohn, January 2001