RE: Best Practices document - not best practices

http://news.bbc.co.uk/detailed/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/summary/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/bite-sized/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/headlines/

These seem better to me than http://news.bbc.co.uk/mobile/

The URLs should describe the resource, not the mechanism/device that is used to access the resource. Strictly speaking, in purist terms, the URL should be opaque and not reveal anything, but we have evolved in our perception of the way the Web works and we now have a reasonable expectation that the URL reflects the resource it references.

I would prefer to be able to enter any of the URLs in my list into my device (mobile or otherwise) and get something that is appropriate to my device and yet also reflects the expectation I had when I selected those particular URLs.

When we see .../mobile/ in a URL we may be inferring something about the nature of the resource because of our current understanding of what "mobile " means. But mobile is diverse, and becoming more diverse over time, so the meaning of mobile is fluid. It would be wrong to infer something about the nature of the resource based on some loose notion about the devices that access it.

So I don't approve of device-specific information appearing in the path, though I know that for technical reasons some sites choose to do so.

---Rotan.

-----Original Message-----
From: Andrea Crevola [mailto:andrea.crevola@3juice.com]
Sent: 08 August 2005 13:27
To: public-bpwg@w3.org
Subject: Re: Best Practices document - not best practices



Hi,

the use of two different urls gives to the user the choiche for choose 
the version that is much closer to his needs.

I think that this kind of selection has a positive effect on user 
experience (sorry if you have already discussed about this idea, but 
I've started reading the list only during last days...) and I think also 
that has to be mainteined someway.

This involves adaptation: we can detect distribution context [1], but 
how many and which degrees of freedom we have to preserve for our user? 
And at what level (website, page, element, style)? What are your opinions?

Best regards,
Andrea
[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/NOTE-di-dco-20050118/

Holley Kevin (Centre) wrote:
> Dear All,
> 
> I am not entirely in agreement with this.  Just looking at these sites:
> 
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/
> 
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/mobile/
> 
> I much prefer the original non-mobile site even on my mobile because the photographs are missing from the "mobile" site.  Many site designers seem to equate "mobile" to "text only" and rich media is really a trade off between screen estate, time to load and content.  I am not clear that "one size fits all users" will really work for this.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Kevin
>  

-- 
e-mail: andrea.crevola[at]3juice.com
msn: andrea.crevola[at]hotmail.com
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Received on Monday, 8 August 2005 12:59:40 UTC