Re: test against Gmail

Not so much a joke as a pointless exercise. Since the checker and the 
whole of mobileOK is about helping people make better resources for 
mobile, the only person they'd be fooling by doing this is themselves.

However, Luca, you do expose the weakness in perceiving mobileOK Basic 
as purely machine testable. The tests can be done by machines, but a 
mobileOK trustmark will require at least some human interaction if it is 
to be certified - which is why mobileOK needs to be carried in some sort 
of label that can be indecently authenticated.

Expect a charter for review on this topic a week today. Meanwhile keep 
your POWDER dry.

Phil.

Luca Passani wrote:
> 
> If someone, as a webmaster, just trapped requests coming from the W3C
> checker and redirected them to a single static MobileOK page (while the rest
> of the site keeps working as it always did), you would get a perfectly
> compliant MobileOK site, but wouldn't that be a joke?
> 
> Luca
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-bpwg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-bpwg-request@w3.org] On
> Behalf Of Jo Rabin
> Sent: Monday, December 04, 2006 11:38 AM
> To: public-bpwg@w3.org
> Subject: RE: test against Gmail
> 
> 
> Rhys
> 
> I take your point, and Rotan's, and think that you both eloquently make a
> case for removing the prescription that the default experience provided by a
> mobileOK site should be a mobile one. If the text of mobileOK is to be
> adjusted to reflect this sentiment, then it would be a good idea for that to
> be done asap, I think. Hopefully either you or he will raise an issue to
> that effect. 
> 
> On the narrower point of 'does the checker check mobile only sites?' I
> assume that the W3C checker sends the 'W3C mobileOK DDC' user agent header,
> so a site should have no difficulty in choosing a mobileOK experience in
> this case.
> 
> Cheers
> Jo
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: public-bpwg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-bpwg-request@w3.org] On
>> Behalf Of Rhys Lewis
>> Sent: 04 December 2006 10:08
>> To: Jo Rabin; public-bpwg@w3.org
>> Subject: RE: test against Gmail
>>
>>
>> Hi Jo,
>>
>> The phrase 'if the nature of the user agent cannot reliably be determined'
>> is the problem. It turns out that there are lots of user agents out there
>> with odd signatures. They might be robots, or custom versions of
>> mainstream browsers, or other things, but they all expect desktop content.
>>
>> Hence, application developers experienced in the art of supporting mobile
>> and non-mobile devices default to sending desktop content if the UA can't
>> be identified. That's excellent practice for mainstream multi-channel
>> applications, like GMail, but is not good practice in terms of MWI BP or
>> for sites that concentrate more on supporting mobile devices than on
>> supporting crawlers or customised browsers. It's really a decision for the
>> site owners on which they would rather do.
>>
>> Cheers
>> Rhys
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: public-bpwg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-bpwg-request@w3.org] On
>> Behalf Of Jo Rabin
>> Sent: 04 December 2006 09:15
>> To: public-bpwg@w3.org
>> Subject: RE: test against Gmail
>>
>>
>>
>>> So you could argue that it is inappropriate to test Gmail using the
>>> checker since it does so much more than just mobile support. The
>>> checker tells you if you are mobileONLY.
>>>
>> >From mobileOK Basic: "mobileOK says nothing about what may be delivered
>>> to
>> non-mobile devices from that URI; however, note that a mobileOK URI must
>> return mobileOK content by default if the nature of the user agent cannot
>> reliably be determined".
>>
>> So I don't think the above is correct. I think the checker checks that in
>> certain circumstances a site provides a mobileOK experience. I don't see
>> that its results are valid only if a site provides _only_ a mobile
>> experience.
>>
>> Jo
>>
>>
>>
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Phil Archer
Chief Technical Officer, ICRA
w. http://www.icra.org/people/philarcher/

Working for a Safer Internet

Received on Monday, 4 December 2006 11:14:36 UTC