Re: [wmlprogramming] Verizon, guidelines

On 21 Dec 2008, at 15:36, Luca Passani wrote:

> > 2. Users are less likely to want full-web content (e.g. long  
> "about" pages, privacy policies)
> > in a mobile context, but may occasionally want it.
> correct, with a very import note. The fact that a user may want a  
> full-web transcoded page does NOT imply that a user is entitled to  
> have it. In particular, if the content owner does not want them to,  
> users do not have this right.

Absolutely, and requiring that transcoders respect no-transform allows  
content providers to express this right.

I realise you feel that no-transform is a "legacy" header (whatever  
that means) that has been "hijacked" (whatever that means).  
Conversations with folks outside of mobile or the W3C[1] seem to  
indicate that no-transform isn't really all that controversial: it's  
the way to do this.

> Transcoders are free to offer the possibility of transcoding, but  
> they should go out of their way to protect mobile optimised content  
> AND the rights of fully-fledged websites that do not want to be  
> transcoded.

Indeed. Mobile optimised content should be offered by default where  
it's available, and no-transform should be respected. I don't hear any  
disagreement on these points.

> The situation here is that some transcoders (notably novarra) go out  
> of their way to fool websites and extort web content when a mobile  
> version might be available.
> My point is that CTG should be clear that this is not acceptable

Read it again Luca. It is quite specific that this is not acceptable,  
in section 4.1.5 and in 4.1.5.3.

> As I had written in http://wapreview.com/blog/?p=1837  , CTG might  
> specify that the operators adds the transcoder info in HTTP headers:

It already does. See section 4.1.6.1, requiring transcoders to add a  
Via header which explicitly states they are transcoders (as opposed to  
other kinds of proxy).

[... Luca's new idea snipped...]

Sounds like a reasonable suggestion, but is also new technology  
(therefore out of scope), seems to conflict with your desire to  
minimise work on the part of developers, and I don't see much  
different in effort-for-developer between this and detecting Via/X- 
Device-User-Agent headers.

Meanwhile, back at the point I was trying to make: if you feel there  
are loopholes in the language of the CTG doc, please suggest  
alternative language which retains the meaning but closes the  
loopholes. No-one wants the hard work that's gone into the document to  
be wasted thanks to linguistic tomfoolery.

Tom

[1] http://groups.google.com/group/jquery-en/browse_thread/thread/439d3a388f6a3d54
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Received on Sunday, 21 December 2008 15:53:30 UTC