RE: please reivew mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0

Hi Laurens

Thanks for your further feedback. For most things connected with
mobileOK there is a fine balance between any two courses of action. 

In respect of whether or not the full set of headers should be sent or
not on every request, my own view is that it is possible that could pick
up errors that would not otherwise be detected - and from a testing
point of view has no particular down-side. 

I'm also not sure how common it is for Web sites to choose an experience
for every request in a piecemeal way rather than specifying an
experience of the Web site as a whole for different classes of device
i.e. it doesn't help them especially to narrow the media types according
to the request.

Contrariwise it reflects common practice and some Web sites use a
limited algorithm to detect whether a device is mobile or not, by
looking for application/vnd.wap.xhtml+xml. It's not a satisfactory
algorithm, in many ways, but it is certainly a valid clue that can be
used. That's not to say that we are saying, one way or the other, that
mobileOK Web sites should or should not depend on that behaviour.
Usually, a number of heuristics will be in use.

I don't think that in specifying this behaviour for the tester we are
setting a bad example. It's not our intention that any aspect of the
specification of the DDC should be a model for how people should build
user agents. We're just trying to help people to build Web sites that
work with mobile devices. mobileOK and the checker it presupposes are
simply tools to assist with that objective.

In respect of your further comment about character encoding, just to
repeat that we have considered this issue very carefully and at length.
We distinguish between the document that is under test and links to
other documents. If the document under test is not UTF-8 then that
generates a FAIL. If a document that is linked to does not specify UTF-8
that generates a WARN because members of the group have determined that
externally linked documents mustn't cause a document under test to FAIL.
We do want to encourage Web sites to support UTF-8 and that is why we
don't specify ISO 8859-1 or Shift JIS or anything else as an
alternative.

I take your comments about an Anglo-centric bias seriously. We have a
fair number of members of the group whose first language is not English
and I feel that their opinions are strongly represented in the group.

Thanks again for your comments - fyi the process is for us to consider
each of your comments and compose a group response, which will be sent
following the end of the last call period.

Jo


> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-bpwg-comments-request@w3.org
[mailto:public-bpwg-comments-
> request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Laurens Holst
> Sent: 11 June 2007 04:24
> To: Sean Owen
> Cc: public-bpwg-comments@w3.org; public-html@w3.org
> Subject: Re: please reivew mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0
> 
> Sean Owen schreef:
> >>  First, section 2.3.2 HTTP Request states:
> >>
> >> Include an Accept header indicating that Internet media types
> >> understood by
> >> the default delivery context are accepted by sending exactly this
> >> header:
> >>  Accept:
> >>
>
application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.1,application/vnd.wap.xhtml+xml;q=0.
1,
> text/css,image/jpeg,image/gif
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>  I think this is incorrect, text/css should NOT be included in the
> >> Accept
> >> header, and image/jpeg and image/gif ONLY if the UA is expected to
> >> support
> >> showing these images independantly of a document (the mobileOK
tests
> >> should
> >> explicitly check whether this is supported). The client after all
> >> does not
> >> know how to handle a text/css file independently of XML markup.
> >>
> >>  Instead, it should send an "Accept: text/css" header when the CSS
> files
> >> that are linked using <link rel="stylesheet">, <?xml-stylesheet?>
or
> >> @include. Similarly, images referenced from <img> should send an
> >> "Accept:
> >> image/jpeg,image/gif" header. Aside from checking the Accept header
> >> for the
> >> main page, the mobileOK tests should also check that Accept headers
> send
> >> these values for stylesheet and image requests.
> >
> > It's an interesting point. RFC 2616 says in 14.1 that Accept *can*
> > indicate desired types this way, and 10.4.7 says that servers can
even
> > return a type not listed in the Accept header in some cases. I bring
> > it up to make the point that Accept seems to be advice, and doesn't
> > have to exactly enumerate acceptable types.
> 
> Quote from 14.1:
> "The Accept request-header field can be used to specify certain media
> types which are acceptable for the response."
> 
> Thus, if the request for a <link> can't handle text/html but only
> text/css, then that is what should be indicated. Saying Accept:
> text/html would say that the link *does* accept and can process
> text/html for that resource, which would be plain wrong. A similar
> example for images.
> 
> Section 10.4.7's note isn't relevant here, that's about what the
server
> returns, not about what headers the UA sends. That's about whether it
> chooses to return no content at all or content that the UA might not
be
> able to process. E.g. when a browser which indicates Accept: text/html
> browses to an .xml document, it might (and would probably) still be
> preferably to send it and have the browser handle it either as
> text/plain or prompt to save it than to show an 406 Not Acceptable
error.
> 
> > It seems standard practice that user agents send a fixed string
> > listing all of what they support each time.
> 
> Well I don't know about that, but it doesn't make sense if they did,
> unless they have some way to process text/css when it's served
> stand-alone. I also wouldn't understand the reason why they would do
so,
> it's virtually effortless to serve a different Accept type based on
the
> data that is expected, and save them quite some transfer overhead on
> many requests as well.
> 
> > Finally it's conceivable that one might vary a document a little bit
> > based on other types in the Accept header, like linking to JPEG
versus
> > PNG images in an <img> tag. I don't know that this is at all common
> > though.
> 
> The image type that is served should be varied based on the Accept
> header of the *image's* request. If that contains image/png, PNG can
be
> served. Doing this like you say is wrong and can never be depended
upon,
> and should certainly not be explicitly supported by a test suite.
> 
> That said, most UAs will probably send the image/ types in the Accept
> header of their primary request because they can usually handle images
> stand-alone. Maybe there are one or two sites that depend on this as
you
> described above, but they're definitely wrong and not OK.
> 
> What I'm suggesting is:
> 
> Main request:
>    Accept:
>
application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.1,application/vnd.wap.xhtml+xml;q=0.
1,
> image/jpeg,image/gif
> 
> Image request:
>    Accept: image/jpeg,image/gif
> Stylesheet request:
>    Accept: text/css
> 
> > If it's not wrong, and mimics real-world user agents a little more,
> > we'd very slightly prefer to keep the fixed Accept header as-is.
> 
> Well it's incorrect usage of the Accept header. And I don't think
> mimicking that is a good thing. The W3C should give the right example.
> 
> If sites actually *depend* on UAs sending static Accept headers for
all
> their requests, they are definitely NOT mobileOK, because they would
> break on any UA that does properly send their Accept headers, and thus
> prevent UAs from doing so, if widespread. This is certainly not
> something that any W3C test should accept.
> 
> >>  Second, in that same section, I think saying that UAs must send
> >> 'exactly'
> >> this header is not desirable. That would prevent UAs from handling
> >> additional media types, such as image/png or image/svg, and limit
> >> innovation. After all, the UA would not be able to claim a mobileOK
> >> label
> >> anymore. The spec should say that UAs must send exactly this or a
> >> superset
> >> of this header.
> >
> > mobileOK Basic tests whether a resource can be delivered in a way
that
> > is compatible with an abstract baseline device profile, the "Default
> > Delivery Context". This profile only assumes GIF and JPEG support,
so
> > it would be undesirable for a mobileOK Basic tests implementation to
> > send a header that says that PNG is supported. The test demands that
> > you demonstrate support or GIF or JPEG, so it doesn't help to add
more
> > types.
> 
> Yeah, sorry, I misunderstood mobileOK to be not only a stamp that
could
> be given to web sites, but also to UAs.
> 
> >>  Sixth, in 3.10 LINK_TARGET_FORMAT, it states:
> >>
> >>
> >> If the Content-Type header value of the HTTP response is not
consistent
> >> (determined in the same way as specified in 3.3
> >> CHARACTER_ENCODING_SUPPORT
> >> and CHARACTER_ENCODING_USE) with the Accept-Charset header in 2.3.2
> HTTP
> >> Request, warn
> >>  This should be a FAIL condition. Character set mismatches are very
> >> undesirable (especially from an i18n perspective) and will create
> >> significant hindrances for most non-English users, whose languages
have
> >> accents or even do not use our alphabet at all.
> >
> > From my reading of RFC 2616, 14.2, it's allowed to send back a
> > character encoding which was not listed in Accept-Charset. It's not
> > desirable, and this triggers a warning.
> >
> > Why not a fail? This test covers external resources, which are
> > possibly outside the author's control. Some felt strongly that one
> > shouldn't FAIL (maybe only temporarily) on account of an external
> > resource. There are arguments both ways here, but that's why this is
> > considered a warning and not a failure.
> 
> I think you mean section 10.4.7, not section 14.2 :). But how about,
> FAIL unless it returns ISO-8859-1, in which case you WARN?
> 
> As ISO-8859-1 and UTF-8 are both compatible with ASCII and thus most
> ISO-8859-1 documents will still be reasonably legible on UTF-8 only
> devices, like Dutch websites on my Japanese DoCoMo phone, in that case
> you could issue a WARN (in spirit of section 10.4.7 of HTTP).
> 
> Though I'd prefer it to be a FAIL :), because it's annoying and
> shouldn't be OK-ed, imho. The amount of characters used outside of
ASCII
> varies per language, for English people it's hardly any bother and
Dutch
> also has reasonably few and there it is a relatively minor annoyance,
> but German and French and Scandinavian languages use accented
characters
> a lot more and for those languages it would either render the page
> unusable or at the least cause major annoyance.
> 
> I guess you could say that labeling it just a warning and not a FAIL
is
> a very English-oriented decision :), and kind of discriminating
towards
> other languages which DO use the characters outside the ASCII range.
> 
> >>  If you want to support ISO-8859-1 in some way to make it easier
for
> >> existing sites to server with the mobileOK label, ISO-8859-1 should
> >> simply
> >> be processed appropriately and added to the Accept-Charset header.
> >
> > Sites are welcome to send back ISO-8859-1 whenever they like,
> > according to Accept-Charset or anything else. But as far as mobileOK
> > Basic Tests are concerned, we want to see the ability to return
UTF-8
> > and test for that. That doesn't mean you always have to return UTF-8
> > to real devices.
> >
> > To put it slightly differently, would you want to force Japanese
sites
> > to return ISO-8859-1 to pass the tests?
> 
> No, of course not :). I was speaking of *adding* to the Accept-Charset
> header, possibly even with a quality indicator like "Accept-Charset:
> UTF-8, ISO-8859-1;q=0.5", it would just be one of the accepted
response
> character sets, if accepting it is what you want to do in this test.
It
> could be somewhat justified with the ASCII-compatibility I mentioned
> above and because at least English-language sites don't use many
> characters outside the ASCII range anyway.
> 
> If a UA only indicates support for UTF-8 though, which I presume you
are
> testing because it is the common denominator between UAs, then I do
not
> think delivering another character set that is not understood by the
UA
> should result in just a warning. My Japanese DoCoMo N902iS phone's
iMode
> browser indeed understands only Shift-JIS and UTF-8, it messes up on
> accents on Dutch ISO-8859-1-encoded sites I visit. I would prefer that
> those sites could not use the 'mobileOK'-label unless they started
using
> UTF-8.
> 
> Maybe the best test would be: if received document's encoding is not
> UTF-8, check if it's an ASCII-compatible encoding. If false, FAIL. If
> true, iterate over the document and check whether ALL characters are
in
> the ASCII range (that is, code points < 128). If so, WARN, otherwise
FAIL.
> 
> >>  Seventh, in section 3.18 POP_UPS, target attributes on links with
> >> values
> >> "_self", "_parent", or "_top" are accepted. All of these should
FAIL,
> >> however, since their presence does not make sense (and is a waste
of
> >> bandwidth) considering the requirements put forth in 3.13
NO_FRAMES.
> >
> > This is a good point. They're a small waste of bandwidth.
> 
> I agree with that, I am not normally a sucker for bandwidth-arguments,
> but I saw similar restrictions imposed in 3.12 MINIMIZE so I thought
I'd
> mention it.
> 
> However, I'm just commenting on the fact that it doesn't make sense
for
> them to be there in the first place, given that frames aren't
'mobileOK'
> :).
> 
> Ok, that's it. I hope my arguments above where coherent, I think I
> mostly made sense ;p. To summarize, I do not think it is correct to
test
> whether a site is OK by sending Accept headers in an incorrect manner,
> and I do not think a warning is sufficient for sites that send their
> content in a non-UTF-8-encoding when one was requested. I kinda like
the
> algo I mentioned in that last paragraph, as it explicitly analyzes the
> document for the thing that the assumption of sending ISO-8859-1 to
> UTF-8-only UAs being acceptable is based upon.
> 
> 
> ~Grauw
> 
> --
> Ushiko-san! Kimi wa doushite, Ushiko-san nan da!!
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Laurens Holst, student, university of Utrecht, the Netherlands.
> Website: www.grauw.nl. Backbase employee; www.backbase.com.

Received on Monday, 11 June 2007 09:16:59 UTC