Re: LC comments [20070130]

 Dear Micah Dubinko ,

The Mobile Web Best Practice Working Group has reviewed the comments you
sent [1] on the Last Call Working Draft [2] of the W3C mobileOK Basic
Tests 1.0 published on 30 Jan 2007. Thank you for having taken the time to
review the document and to send us comments!

The Working Group's response to your comment is included below, and has
been implemented in the new version of the document available at:
http://www.w3.org/TR /2007/WD-mobileOK-basic10-tests-20070525/

Please review it carefully and let us know if you agree with it or not
before 22 June 2007. In case of disagreement, you are requested to provide
a specific solution for or a path to a consensus with the Working Group. If
such a consensus cannot be achieved, you will be given the opportunity to
raise a formal objection which will then be reviewed by the Director
during the transition of this document to the next stage in the W3C
Recommendation Track.

Thanks,

For the Mobile Web Best Practice Working Group,
Michael(tm) Smith
W3C Staff Contact

 1. http://www.w3.org/mid/858390.19311.qm@web31807.mail.mud.yahoo.com
 2. http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-mobileOK-basic10-tests-20070130/


=====

Your comment on the document as a whole:
> Overall impression
> 
> The overall impression the tests give me is that, given a
> non-whitelisted device, the safer alternative is to exclude all CSS.
> This seems like the wrong impression to give mobile developers.


Working Group Resolution:
No we don't see how the document supports this interpretation.

The only tests related to CSS styles are:

MEASURES: This test set a restriction on using only relative measures of
length.

STYLE_SHEETS_SUPPORT: This tests searches properties such as position,
display or float getting a warning in the worst case. In addition, a human
test should verify if the page is readable without style sheet.

STYLE_SHEETS_USE: This test looks for elements not supported in XHTML
Basic.

>From these tests, we think that you cannot infer that the safer
alternative is to exclude all CSS. It is only STYLE_SHEETS_SUPPORT which
recommends that a page should be readable without style sheets, which is
really helpful in devices not supporting them or just configured by the
user in order to not use them. 

----

Your comment on 3.4 CONTENT_FORMAT_SUPPORT:
> 3.4 CONTENT_FORMAT_SUPPORT
> 
> Is the intent that all WML content is excluded from the possibility of
> being mobileOK? In some regions, WML devices still represent the
> majority of mobile  UAs. To ask another way, it the intent of these
> tests to specifically exclude testable guidelines for WML?


Working Group Resolution:
The answer is that if you can't respond with XHTML then no you are not
mobileOK. There's nothing stopping you providing WML in addition.

----

Your comment on 3.7 GRAPHICS_FOR_SPACING:
> 3.7 GRAPHICS_FOR_SPACING
> 
> Would it make sense to fail on > 1 transparent image (instead of going
> by size)? Having 20 2px by 2xp images is still bad.


Working Group Resolution:
In this case you only get a warn. We think that it would not make sense to
fail on strictly more than one transparent images because it is known that
some sites uses more than one transparent image in order to report several
other companies about hit information.

It would be difficult to fix a strict number and also to distinguish
between tracking purposes images from positioning ones. These kinds of
subjective criteria should be dealt with by human experts and they might
be refined in mobileOK (Plus?)

Also from "3.6  EXTERNAL_RESOURCES" [1], 10 external resources (including
images, then) generates a warn, 20 generates a fail. So 20 2x2 images will
 generate a fail anyway.

----

Your comment on 3.11 MEASURES:
> 3.11 MEASURES
> 
> Should the 'outline' properies, which work much like the 'border'
> properties, be mentioned here?


Working Group Resolution:
One main difference between 'border' properties and 'outline' properties
is the consumption of space. Outline properties do not take extra space.
So if you had an image that was 50 pixels wide, with a 2 pixel border, it
would take up 54 pixels (2 pixels for each side border). That same image
with a 2 pixel outline would take up only 50 pixels width on your page,
the outline would display over the outside edge of the image.



----

Your comment on 3.16 PAGE_SIZE_LIMIT:
> 3.16 PAGE_SIZE_LIMIT
> 
> 10k is extremely limited, and dates the document. What are the plans
> for updates?


Working Group Resolution:
We do acknowledge that size limits of 10kb for markup and 20kb for total
(including external references) is rather small and limiting. However, the
rationale behind the Default Delivery Context and page size limit is to
provide guidance as to how to develop content that will work in largest
possible numbers of devices already out on the marketplace.

As the marketplace today is still dominated mostly by devices with limited
memory resources, we think this recommendation is a valid one within this
context. If confronted with facts proving this guideline wrong we are more
than happy to change it. This is a guideline that needs to evolve over
time.


----

Your comment on 3.17 PAGE_TITLE (partial):
> 3.17 PAGE_TITLE (partial)
> 
> If <title> is missing, the document is invalid. So redundant w/
> VALID_MARKUP


Working Group Resolution:
Fair point. We had deliberately allowed some redundancy in cases where it
makes the test results clearer. You are correct that a missing <title>
yields a failure in VALID_MARKUP, but it felt odd to not cause a failure
in PAGE_TITLE too since it's specifically testing <title>

----

Received on Thursday, 7 June 2007 16:12:05 UTC