RE: test against Gmail

> Sean Owen wrote
>
>- You wonder why anyone would think of mobile web and
> web clients as the same. I don't think anyone is 
> suggesting this and don't see why this perception
> has persisted. The BPs and mobileOK are in fact
> specifically about content tailored for mobile
> devices, and specifically not about any other content
> I think the BPs have almost
> no bearing on how you choose to adapt content,
> or "one web" issues, as
> a result (see previous post though).

quoting from http://www.w3.org/TR/mobile-bp-scope/

""One Web" vision of a seamlessly integrated Internet remains the long-term
objective of the Mobile Web Initiative. Members of the Mobile Web Best
Practices Working Group (BPWG) are well aware of the challenges and
complexities stemming from diversity of mobile devices. However, we do not
aim to address all the related issues - including many legacy problems. Our
immediate goal is to define a set of forward looking Best Practices
guidelines that - when followed by authors and developers - are likely to
make their content accessible with equal ease to users of desktop and mobile
devices of certain assumed capabilities. It is expected that this will
ensure a positive user experience in both environments - within the
constrains of an appropriate delivery context"

I don't understand why you still wonder where the perception comes from.
This is what BPWG has wanted all the way (for the record, I find "one web"
totally crazy).


>- You could only serve mobileOK content to the mobileOK
> tester user agent. I suppose you could do that to fake
> out the XHTML validator
>too. What is the incentive to do so -- why invest time making a
>mobileOK site and then not deploy it to the world?

as I said, if BP has little or no value for developers and end-users (which
is what I happen to believe), the only entity which may introduce the
requirements are operators which were sold on the idea that BP does bring
some advantage of some kind. In those cases, developers will just find ways
to satisfy the requirement with minimal effort, get the BPW3C stamp and move
on to do something more useful. 

> - Your mobile site could consist of only a (mobileOK)
>  error page, yes, one that passes the tests.
> The problem with that scenario is not
> mobileOK tests -- your error page may well be a great
> mobile error page -- but with the fact that your
> site consists of one error page.
> Some site! I don't see incentives for behavior like this.

The point is that the real non-BP site will be the one that does the real
job. They may not be using "forward looking practices", but it will work for
real.

> If you believe  that developers will often look for the easy way out,
> then I suggest that the easy way out here is to simply
> ignore mobileOK.

I could bet a few hundreds bucks that this is going to happen in fact.
Developers working for operators may be implementing MobileOK because of
requirements coming from above, but independent developers are not being
given a compelling reason to apply BPs.

> Those that adopt mobileOK are those that want to adopt mobileOK
> because it adds value; we hope many developers feel this way.

to hope is perfectly legitimate :)

> - Of course, Google mobile web services have been tested
> and work pretty well already, but nobody's perfect
> and there is always room for improvement.

why? if the application works on all the major devices around the planet,
why should it be fixed?

> Running even the preliminary checker reveals some
> problems that should be fixed on, say, mobile Gmail.
> (And I'll try to get them fixed.)

I am really curious to know how the people who created mobile gmail will
react to your request to "fix". Will you let me know?

> If anything that demonstrates that even established
> sites can benefit from mobileOK, and it has value not just for
> new-to-mobile developers. I don't see a disconnect with
> Phil since he was talking about something entirely
> different... maybe I misunderstood which post you were referring to.

I was assuming that Google had invested a large amount of resources to get
Gmail on mobile right, which implied that applying those minimalistic BPs
made no sense. You tell me that BP is so good that it has value also for
professional mobile developers. Very well, then. Let me know what your
engineers have to say, because something tells me that that's where the
rubber will meet the asphalt (the extra effort for supporting BPs will not
be justified by any advantage BPs can deliver at the moment).

Luca

Received on Tuesday, 5 December 2006 10:11:31 UTC