Re: Comments on Mobile Web App Best Practices ( LC-2271 LC-2272 LC-2273 LC-2275 LC-2274 LC-2276 LC-2277 LC-2278 LC-2279 LC-2280 LC-2281 LC-2282 LC-2283 LC-2284 LC-2285 LC-2286 LC-2287 LC-2288)

Dominique, François et al.,

Thanks for taking my comments on board. I agree with your responses
and the subsequent changes made.

Cheers
-Marc

On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 10:45 AM,  <fd@w3.org> wrote:
>
>  Dear Marc Wilson ,
>
> The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has reviewed the comments you
> sent [1] on the Last Call Working Draft [2] of the Mobile Web Application
> Best Practices published on 6 Oct 2009. 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/2005/MWI/BPWG/Group/Drafts/BestPractices-2.0/ED-mobile-bp2-20091210.
>
> Please review it carefully and let us know by email at
> public-bpwg-comments@w3.org if you agree with it or not before 5 January
> 2010. 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 Practices Working Group,
> Dominique Hazaël-Massieux
> François Daoust
> W3C Staff Contacts
>
>  1.
> http://www.w3.org/mid/b578e9ef0911100216r57efe60fq7f6f0ea8bd7727a7@mail.gmail.com
>  2. http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-mwabp-20091006/
>
>
> =====
>
> Your comment on 3.1.1 Use Cookies Sparingly:
>> 3.1.1.1
>> Cookies being disabled by devices isn't a mobile specific issue as it
>> also applies to desktop. New devices Android, iPhone, Nokia s60 and
>> beyond, Palm, etc.. all ship with cookies enabled by default.
>> Maybe it is covered elsewhere but there is no mention of privacy
>> issues sending data back to the server via cookies, only the network
>> concern. With access to very sensitive data like location this might
>> be worth flagging for mobile.
>
>
> Working Group Resolution (LC-2271):
> We disagree with the claim that there is no mobile-specific aspect to
> cookies (the shifting of data is mobile-specific). Generic privacy issues
> are considered out of scope of this document
>
> ----
>
> Your comment on 3.1.2 Use Appropriate Client-Side Storage Technologies for
> Local Data:
>> 3.1.2.1
>> Given that HTML5 is now drafting specs for a Web Storage and Web
>> Database that is shipping in iPhone 3.x and Android 2.x it seems odd
>> to me to mention Bondi and Opera widgets in this context, especially
>> given the focus of this document is for applications in a browser.
>> The second point of "making updates locally at first" should be
>> supplemented with a need to add UI treatment to make it clear to the
>> user that their data is uncommitted.
>
>
> Working Group Resolution (LC-2272):
> We will add text to 3.1.2.1. stating that work is in progress to unify
> these apis and pointing to the work of WebApps and Device API WGs.
>
> Regarding the need to add UI treatment, we think we make sufficient
> comment about progress indications elsewhere in the spec.
>
>
>
> ----
>
> Your comment on 3.2.1 Do not Execute Unescaped or Untrusted JSON data:
>> 3.2.1.2
>> One way to be able to eval() untrusted data is to perform the JSON
>> escaping on the server where the processing power is less constrained
>> than on the client since we are downloading the data anyway
>> (presumably).
>
>
> Working Group Resolution (LC-2273):
> We agree but note the text already mentions that the JSON datafeed has to
> be suitably escaped when the eval() function is used.
>
> ----
>
> Your comment on 3.3.1 Inform the User About Automatic Network Access:
>> 3.3.1.2
>> AFAIK some devices will provide UI indications in their status bar of
>> network activity, with a spinner or mobile data flow indicators. While
>> informing users of background network usage may be desirable, it might
>> be overkill to have 3 separate indicators. Maybe you could suggest to
>> provide UI on devices where the browser does not do it natively
>
>
> Working Group Resolution (LC-2275):
> We understand the point but think that this would complicate things for
> authors who would then have to maintain different variants of their
> applications for different browsers.
>
> ----
>
> Your comment on 3.3.1 Inform the User About Automatic Network Access:
>> 3.3.1.1
>> nit: double period at the end of first sentence
>
>
> Working Group Resolution (LC-2274):
> Thanks. Double period removed and sentence completed.
>
> ----
>
> Your comment on 3.3.2 Provide Sufficient Means to Control Automatic
> Network Access:
>> 3.3.2.2
>> "must" seems a bit strong here. Some applications that inherently
>> require network access (think IM, mapping, etc..) will not be usable
>> with no network access, so providing such an option should not be
>> mandatory.
>
>
> Working Group Resolution (LC-2276):
> We agree that the wording is too strong and have replaced "must" by
> "should".
>
> ----
>
> Your comment on 3.3.4 Enable Automatic Sign-in:
>> 3.3.4
>> Consider adding something along the lines of
>> "If devices persist authentication tokens then the server MUST
>> invalidate them if the user changes or resets their password"
>> This is especially important with mobile devices that are often
>> lost/stolen and provides a user with a way to after the fact lock the
>> phone out of web applications it had previously been authorised for.
>
>
> Working Group Resolution (LC-2277):
> We agree but think that the current text in the "How to do it" already
> addresses this need. We have added a note to emphasize that a sign-out link
> should be also provided if automatic sign-in is enabled.
>
> ----
>
> Your comment on 3.4.4 Optimize Network Requests:
>> 3.4.4.2
>> One suggestion to add here is to prioritise your network requests and
>> throttle the number of connections in order to ensure that high
>> priority requests are not blocked or slowed by lower priority
>> requests, if they are unable to be batched.
>
>
> Working Group Resolution (LC-2278):
> We agree and have added the suggestion to the list.
>
> ----
>
> Your comment on 3.4.5 Minimize External Resources:
>> 3.4.5.1
>> This is a dangerous recommendation when even modern browsers like
>> mobile safari on iPhone have a limited browser cache entry size of
>> 25kb uncompressed. It is a good recommendation but relies partially on
>> the assumption that the caching of a single large resource is no worse
>> than multiple single resources.
>
>
> Working Group Resolution (LC-2279):
> We think that this limitation is obsolete and that the best practice is
> good in the generic case. We do not think that we can recommend an explicit
> size limit as this is likely to evolve over time.
>
> ----
>
> Your comment on 3.4.10 Don't Send Cookie Information Unnecessarily:
>> 3.4.10
>> Although this is a different point to 3.1.1 they are related and maybe
>> should be merged, colocated or reference each other
>
>
> Working Group Resolution (LC-2280):
> We think that both best practices address cookies in very different ways
> and would not benefit from referencing each other.
>
> ----
>
> Your comment on 3.4.11 Keep DOM Size Reasonable:
>> 3.4.11
>> I don't like this recommendation.
>> What does "reasonable" mean? What about "manageable"?
>> What is a 10Mb DOM?
>> How should people measure it?
>> Why was this value chosen? (Recent high end browser handle much larger
>> DOMs)
>>
>> It is unclear what the recommendation to "Clip content and separate
>> content onto separate pages" means.
>> Are you saying to make top level URL changes to download new pages
>> (and parse new JS)? If you are I think that is a bad recommendation as
>> the latency hit is quite bad.
>> Typically a better solution is to rather than hide non visible DOM
>> elements, to instead remove these elements from the DOM altogether and
>> recreate them as needed.
>
>
> Working Group Resolution (LC-2281):
> We agree and have reworded the section to remove mention of a specific DOM
> size.
>
> ----
>
> Your comment on 3.5.1 Optimize For Application Start-up Time:
>> 3.5.1.1
>> App Cache link should now point to:
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/offline.html
>>
>> 3.5.1.2
>> I like these recommendations. Good stuff.
>>
>> One thing you could add is to initiate any network requests before JS
>> parsing begins, so that the network request is in flight while the
>> parse occurs. This can work well for applications that require fresh,
>> rather than, cached data to be useful as it parallelises the network
>> request and JS parse.
>
>
> Working Group Resolution (LC-2282):
> Ref. App Cache, thank you, we have updated the reference.
> Ref. initiating network requests before JS parsing, we think it depends on
> what the Javascript is supposed to be doing. Section 3.5.2.2 on minimizing
> perceived latency mentions moving Javascript to the bottom of the page. We
> also note that there is ongoing research on that topic.
>
> ----
>
> Your comment on 3.5.4 Preserve Focus on Dynamic Page Updates:
>> 3.5.4
>> The tone of this recommendation is odd. I agree that the user
>> shouldn't be warped away from their current view but there are cases
>> where programatically setting the focus is very desirable if the next
>> user action is expected to be character input and setting the focus in
>> these cases should be recommended.
>
>
> Working Group Resolution (LC-2283):
> We agree with the comment but think the current text already addresses
> such cases.
>
> ----
>
> Your comment on 3.5.6 Make Telephone Numbers "Click-to-Call":
>> 3.5.6.2
>> Maybe a mention of the format of the number used in the tel: URI
>> A best practice is to use a full international number prefixed by +
>> and a country code.
>> This is recommended in the RFC so it isn't necessary to include it
>> here, but it is currently quite common for people to use tel: URIs
>> with only local numbers that don't work in a different calling prefix
>> or different country.
>
>
> Working Group Resolution (LC-2284):
> We agree and have updated the example accordingly.
>
> ----
>
> Your comment on 3.5.11 Use viewport Meta Tag To Identify Desired Screen
> Size:
>> 3.5.11.2
>> Setting minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0 has accessibility impacts
>> as it usually makes it impossible to manually zoom into the screen,
>> which can be useful for visually impaired users.
>
>
> Working Group Resolution (LC-2285):
> We agree and have fixed the example and the text.
>
> ----
>
> Your comment on 3.6.3 Use Device Classification to Simplify Content
> Adaptation:
>> 3.6.3.2
>> Class 2 and 3 are very similar, the difference being the advanced APIs
>> available in class 3. For example, the iPhone v2.0 browser was class 2
>> and v3.0 is class 3 by your classification. Typically these
>> differences don't require different variants, the class 3 device just
>> has a richer and faster experience. A more useful axis is touch screen
>> v non touch screen.
>
>
> Working Group Resolution (LC-2286):
> We agree, note that the classification depends on the type of application
> being considered, and have added a second example with the suggested touch
> screen class.
>
> ----
>
> Your comment on 3.6.4 Support a non-JavaScript Variant if Appropriate:
>> 3.6.4
>> There was no mention of <noscript>. Is this deliberate?
>
>
> Working Group Resolution (LC-2287):
> We agree and have added text regarding the use of <noscript>.
>
> ----
>
> Your comment on 3.6.4 Support a non-JavaScript Variant if Appropriate:
>> 3.6.4.2
>> Are we really recommending to send the user back a HTTP error code
>> that essentially provides no information to the user as to why their
>> request is "Not Acceptable". I understand this may be the 'correct'
>> behaviour, but the UX it results in is hideous.
>
>
> Working Group Resolution (LC-2288):
> We agree and have removed the reference to the 406 status code.
>
> ----
>
>
>

Received on Tuesday, 22 December 2009 15:55:57 UTC