Re: BP2 (BP mobile web-apps) - some words related to scope.

+1 to the sense of all of this. I'd personally support any wording
along these lines.

On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 5:36 PM, Adam Connors <adamconnors@google.com> wrote:
> Okay, so based on the various conversations and threads we've had these past
> few weeks on the scope of the BP2 (BPMWA ?) document I've attempted to
> redraft section 1.4 Scope.
>
> Pasted below is a straw-man of some words that attempt to assimilate
> everyone's ideas of what the scope of this document should be and address
> the various grey-areas that have tripped us up previously. Apologies for the
> short notice, but if possible I'd like to spend some time on tomorrow's call
> to iterate on this section by way of helping us zero in on a common
> understanding of the scope and direction of this document.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Adam.
>
> ---
>
> 1.4 Scope
>
> These recommendations follow in the footsteps of the Mobile Web Best
> Practices (BP1), for which the scope was laid out in "Scope of Mobile Web
> Best Practices" [Scope]. Where BP1 referred primarily to the extension of
> web browsing onto mobile devices, this document further extends that scope
> to consider the use of web-applications on mobile devices.
>
> This document sets out a series of best practices that are intended to help
> content creators develop and deliver great web applications in the mobile
> context.
>
> 1.4.1 Best Practices
>
> The approach in writing this document has been to collate and present the
> most relevant engineering practices prevalent in the development community
> today and identify those that: a) facilitate the exploitation of modern
> device capabilities to enable an optimal user-experience for mobile
> web-applications; or b) are considered harmful and can have non-obvious
> detrimental effects on the overall quality of your mobile web-application.
>
> The goal of this document is not to invent or endorse future technologies.
> However, there are a number of cases where explicitly omitting a
> best-practice that referred to an emerging technology on the grounds that it
> is too recent to have received wide adoption would have unnecessarily
> excluded a valuable recommendation. As such, some best-practices have been
> included on the grounds that we believe they will become fully qualified
> best-practices (e.g. in prevalent use within the development community and
> considered to have a positive impact on the overall quality of your
> web-application) in the very near future.
>
> 1.4.2 Web Applications
>
> For the purposes of this document, the term "web application" refers to a
> web page (XHTML or a variant thereof + CSS) or collection of web pages
> delivered over HTTP which use either server-side or client-side processing
> (e.g. javascript) to provide an "application-like" experience within a
> web-browser. Web applications are distinct from simple web content (the
> focus of BP1) in that they include some elements of interactivity and
> persistent state.
>
> It should be noted that there are a number of emerging mobile technologies
> that allow web-applications to be delivered in a more componentized or
> gadget-like way, outside of a traditional browser [REFERENCES TO WEBLETS,
> ETC]. Whilst many of the recommendations in this document remain relevant in
> these contexts, no explicit effort has been made to adapt them for this
> scenario on the grounds that there are as yet no convergent technologies or
> practices for non-browser based web-applications. As such, the reader should
> remain mindful of potential divergences from these recommendations when
> dealing with web-applications delivered outside of a browser.
>
> 1.4.3 Mobile Context
>
> In an increasingly mobilised world the line between mobile and non-mobile is
> necessarily blurred and a document focussing solely on best-practices that
> are uniquely mobile would most likely be very short. With this in mind, the
> focus of this document is to address those aspects of web-application
> development for which there are additional, non-trivial concerns associated
> with the mobile context. This applies equally both to the limitations of the
> mobile context (e.g. small screen, poor connectivity), and also the
> additional scope and features that must be considered when developing for
> the mobile context (e.g. device context / location, presence of personal
> data on the device, etc).
>
> Note that additional weight has been placed on those aspects of the mobile
> context that are believed to be intrinsic and likely not to change in the
> foreseeable future (e.g. limited input capabilities) as opposed to those
> that are likely to disappear quickly as the technology evolves (e.g. limited
> device processing capability).
>
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 21 May 2008 21:42:30 UTC