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

Adam,
I will incorporate this into the draft I will send out before the
meeting tomorrow. I plan to merge the 2.x and 5.x sections as noted in
the last call.
 
On the "outside browser" point, what do you think is the criteria upon
we could claim to have "convergent technologies"? Certainly there are
market-available products that support non-browser widgets, and W3C is
close to completing specs on Widgets, including specifically standalone
ones. OpenAjax for another, is active in this space.
 
I expect that if W3C does not take the lead on this soon, it will miss a
great opportunity to help the widget development community "do it right
the first time". There are probably a lot of developers out there that
won't read a document overtly focused on browser-based web applications
alone, and they will miss out as a result. 
 
Best regards,
Bryan Sullivan | AT&T 
________________________________

From: public-bpwg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-bpwg-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Adam Connors
Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2008 2:36 PM
To: MWI BPWG Public
Subject: BP2 (BP mobile web-apps) - some words related to scope.


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).