Re: Widgets Re: ISSUE-237 (Define Mobile Web Applications)

On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 11:53 AM, Charles McCathieNevile
<chaals@opera.com> wrote:
>  The point of standardising it was that it is implemented in practice.
>  Opera, Apple, Nokia and others ship this to phones, it's available for Wii
>  and various flavours of desktop such as opera (all desktop OS), MacOS,
>  iPhone, and there are various systems that embed widgets into a web
>  application you can use, from providers like Google and AOL.

... etc., but we're not a widget working group per se, irrespective of
the merits of it, and I'm sure it's a good thing.

>  I think the technology is clearly a best practice for delivering
>  applications - you are basically reducing the transfer from the entire
>  application to just the changing bits. Since widgets have persistent
>  client-side storage, you can use them for real stuff like mail
>  applications or the fairly common feed readers as well as the apparently
>  ubiquitous stock tickers, clocks, weather information (if you are mobile,
>  why not just look up to find out the weather?).

Sure, but I think you are saying it is not yet practice even. Maybe it
will be -- it's even likely. BP3? sure, maybe so.

Maybe this does deserve discussion. Our charter says that BPs are
about codifying current best practices for applying existing web
standards most effectively. This widget technology would not fall into
the category of existing web standards. Even mentioning XHTML 1.1 in
BP1 ended up being too optimistic.

BP1 put together the knowledge gathered over WAP's first, what, 7
years of slow evolution? We're now talking about writing BPs for
devices that have been out for a year, maybe two. I admit I think it's
a little early, but not entirely premature. The more-capable mobile
platform we're thinking of is getting close to a desktop browser,
leaving less mobile-specific to talk about. There may not be 60 new
BPs. But we can't be tempted to write about things that might be a
good idea later, it's not in our remit.

Received on Sunday, 24 February 2008 17:15:24 UTC