Re: please reivew mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0

Wednesday, June 13, 2007 6:33 PMSean Owen
> I do think it's feasible to write once for the desktop and some kind
> of portable device, but such a device is substantially different from
> what people have in their average phone / browser.

Perhaps the Default Delivery Context (DDC) is out of date? It seems to be 
based on mobile phones produced in the mid-1990's. They have become 
radically more capable in the decade since then. My experience is mainstream 
mobiles getting closer to desktop browsers each year (Opera [1] and Webkit 
[2] being industry leaders in this regard).

The mobile industry's aims are clear from their actions: make the whole web 
available [3][4]. Surely W3C's MWI should be centered on making that happen 
faster and more effectively? The current work seems to be on degrading 
current content to accomodate a DDC akin to decade-old phones which, AFAIK, 
no longer exist.

Vodafone [5], T-Mobile [3] and Three [6] already have a flat rate for web 
access in the UK (as Simon Pieters speculated on). So for one thing, the 
financial cost of page downloads is being solved by market factors...just 
like it did for desktop PCs. :-)

Wednesday, June 13, 2007 6:33 PMSean Owen
> If "HTML Basic" existed I think there would be a good argument to
> specify it instead.

Since text/html work has started again at W3C in the form of the HTMLWG, 
perhaps an "HTML Basic" spec would now be feasible? Then again, the 1998 
attempt at this [7] didn't take off, so reduced HTML was not the solution 
even with devices *that* limited. And since current mobiles handle full HTML 
websites, degrading content at the origin server seems ever more unnecessary 
(the network can do this on-the-fly if it needs to be done).

Sincere thanks for taking the feedback from the new HTMLWG seriously. I too 
hope HTMLWG will add more practical value to the W3C's Mobile Web Initiative 
(MWI) [8].

[1] <http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/>
[2] <http://webkit.org/blog/60/nokia-releases-s60-webkit-sources/>
[3] <http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/services/mobile-internet/on-your-phone/>
[4] <http://tinyurl.com/2nt4ea>
[5] <http://tinyurl.com/25o2a7>
[6] <http://tinyurl.com/3ey7ru>
[7] <http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/NOTE-compactHTML-19980209/>
[8] <http://www.w3.org/Mobile/>

Ben 'Cerbera' Millard
--------------------
http://projectcerbera.com 

Received on Wednesday, 13 June 2007 23:27:40 UTC