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

+1 

Looks good to me. One suggestion: I would suggest using the word "widgget" in replacement to or in addition to "gadget" because "widget" is the more widely used term for what you're talking about (and maps onto the w3c work in this space).

Dan
--
Daniel K. Appelquist
+44 7748 111635
daniel.appelquist@vodafone.com 

----- Original Message -----
From: public-bpwg-request@w3.org <public-bpwg-request@w3.org>
To: Adam Connors <adamconnors@google.com>; MWI BPWG Public <public-bpwg@w3.org>
Sent: Thu May 22 04:09:48 2008
Subject: 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).

Received on Thursday, 22 May 2008 07:19:37 UTC