RE: test against Gmail

Well, Luca, your site would conform to the markup requirements, that
much can be said. And if you are a minimalist, then you might feel that
you've done enough. But I hope that some developers might have a bit
more pride in what they do, and would at least make some additional
effort. For example, on the page that says "sorry", you could add links
to give the user some optional paths: one for mobile (DDC), one for
simple desktop, one for TV perhaps, and hope that the user might be able
to make use of one of them. (Assuming of course that the "sorry" page
could actually be rendered on the device!)

I just hope that Web developers will do what makes the most sense, what
brings value to their service, what makes the Web better, not less.
Sure, there will be some who will look for short-cuts to get some form
of certification, so we need to be absolutely clear what is being
certified. Consider the W3C's markup validators. They merely check that
the XHTML is correctly formed. They say nothing about whether the Web
pages are any good. (Yet some sites abuse the W3C's validator mark as if
it were some kind of endorsement for their content.)

The mobileOK checker can only make statements about what it can test. It
cannot say if the site is truly something that Web users (mobile or
otherwise) will appreciate. And to fail the automated test is not
necessarily proof that the site is bad. Gmail, as we know, actually is
quite OK on many mobile devices despite what the cheker says.

I know that the BP people are putting in a lot of effort to bring their
ideas of best practices, good mobile experiences, testable behaviour,
etc together, but their task is far from over. Especially so long as we
can see differences between what real people perceive as good mobile
experiences and what the "rules" say will create such experiences. The
gap will slowly close, but not entirely, because the assessment of an
experience is ultimately one for people, not machines.

The merry-go-round might never stop, but there's be a lot more riding on
it as time goes by, and probably some going around in the opposite
direction! :)

---Rotan.

-----Original Message-----
From: public-bpwg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-bpwg-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Luca Passani
Sent: 04 December 2006 11:19
To: public-bpwg@w3.org
Subject: RE: test against Gmail



Rotan, you already provided my counter-argument here.

So, my static MobileOK page contains the company logo + a message that
says "your device is not recognized and we don't know what it can or
can't do.
Sorry".

Can I go and tell the world that my site is MobileOK or is there
something more I need to do?

Don't forget that, once the merry-go-round stops, developers will look
for practical minimal ways to comply to whatever comes from the top but
delivers no extra value.

Luca

-----Original Message-----
From: public-bpwg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-bpwg-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Rotan Hanrahan
Sent: Monday, December 04, 2006 12:12 PM
To: public-bpwg@w3.org
Subject: RE: test against Gmail


Except that you wouldn't. There would be an absence of thematic
consistency. Unfortunately, this is not something that one can easily
check automatically. Of course, even thematic consistency can be pushed
too far. Sometimes it just doesn't make sense to give a certain kind of
presentation/service on a certain kind of device. So, we should evaluate
sites on what makes sense. Is the content sensible? Is it consistent
across devices where this would make sense? Does it default to a
sensible type of device in the absence of information about the device?
Etc. There are many questions. But to ask an automated checker to do all
this for us is asking too much.

That's not to undervalue the checker. It's very useful. But it cannot be
the only test, as the people behind it acknowledge.

---Rotan

-----Original Message-----
From: public-bpwg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-bpwg-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Luca Passani
Sent: 04 December 2006 11:04
To: public-bpwg@w3.org
Subject: RE: test against Gmail



If someone, as a webmaster, just trapped requests coming from the W3C
checker and redirected them to a single static MobileOK page (while the
rest of the site keeps working as it always did), you would get a
perfectly compliant MobileOK site, but wouldn't that be a joke?

Luca

-----Original Message-----
From: public-bpwg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-bpwg-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Jo Rabin
Sent: Monday, December 04, 2006 11:38 AM
To: public-bpwg@w3.org
Subject: RE: test against Gmail


Rhys

I take your point, and Rotan's, and think that you both eloquently make
a case for removing the prescription that the default experience
provided by a mobileOK site should be a mobile one. If the text of
mobileOK is to be adjusted to reflect this sentiment, then it would be a
good idea for that to be done asap, I think. Hopefully either you or he
will raise an issue to that effect. 

On the narrower point of 'does the checker check mobile only sites?' I
assume that the W3C checker sends the 'W3C mobileOK DDC' user agent
header, so a site should have no difficulty in choosing a mobileOK
experience in this case.

Cheers
Jo

> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-bpwg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-bpwg-request@w3.org]
> On Behalf Of Rhys Lewis
> Sent: 04 December 2006 10:08
> To: Jo Rabin; public-bpwg@w3.org
> Subject: RE: test against Gmail
> 
> 
> Hi Jo,
> 
> The phrase 'if the nature of the user agent cannot reliably be
determined'
> is the problem. It turns out that there are lots of user agents out 
> there with odd signatures. They might be robots, or custom versions of

> mainstream browsers, or other things, but they all expect desktop
content.
> 
> Hence, application developers experienced in the art of supporting 
> mobile and non-mobile devices default to sending desktop content if 
> the UA can't be identified. That's excellent practice for mainstream 
> multi-channel applications, like GMail, but is not good practice in 
> terms of MWI BP or for sites that concentrate more on supporting 
> mobile devices than on supporting crawlers or customised browsers.
> It's really a decision for the site owners on which they would rather
do.
> 
> Cheers
> Rhys
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-bpwg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-bpwg-request@w3.org]
> On Behalf Of Jo Rabin
> Sent: 04 December 2006 09:15
> To: public-bpwg@w3.org
> Subject: RE: test against Gmail
> 
> 
> 
> > So you could argue that it is inappropriate to test Gmail using the 
> > checker since it does so much more than just mobile support. The 
> > checker tells you if you are mobileONLY.
> >
> 
> >From mobileOK Basic: "mobileOK says nothing about what may be 
> >delivered to
> non-mobile devices from that URI; however, note that a mobileOK URI 
> must return mobileOK content by default if the nature of the user 
> agent cannot reliably be determined".
> 
> So I don't think the above is correct. I think the checker checks that

> in certain circumstances a site provides a mobileOK experience. I 
> don't see that its results are valid only if a site provides _only_ a 
> mobile experience.
> 
> Jo
> 
> 
>

Received on Monday, 4 December 2006 11:44:41 UTC