RE: User notifications in the guidelines for Web Content Transformation Proxies

I offer the following text:

"Where the specification indicates the necessity to convey information to the user or obtain information from the user for the purpose of giving advice, notice or selection of options, the expectation is that the means of delivery shall be the same or equivalent to the means used to convey the main content or service."

This avoids any need to go into details about look and feel or specific protocols. Basically, whatever is considered normal for conveying the main content should also be used for conveying meta-content.

I further suggest that you could think of using a smaller set of phrases. Perhaps all you need are "inform the user" and "enable the user to choose", which can be worked into the several sentences mentioned. If so, then you can formally define those phrases.

---Rotan.


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From: public-bpwg-request@w3.org on behalf of Francois Daoust
Sent: Tue 08/12/2009 21:19
To: Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group WG
Subject: User notifications in the guidelines for Web Content Transformation Proxies



Hi again,

Looking at the spec with the same "we need a test suite" eyes, and in
connection with LC-2317 [1] (member-only link, public comment at [2]), I
think we need to define what we mean with expressions such as "notify
the user", "inform the user", or "provide a means for users".

We might not want to go there, but if we don't provide a more precise
definition, one could say that e.g. sending an SMS to the user with a
"send YES to 99999 to view unaltered content" message is a valid
implementation. In any case, I cannot think of any proper way to write
test cases for these statements.

Please find below a list of normative statements extracted from the
guidelines that contain such expressions. Please refer to the spec for
more context.

A definition of the interaction means that we are thinking about and
that we could refer to should solve the problem. I am not sure how this
definition should be formulated, something like "an HTML fragment
displayed in the page browsed by the user", or "an interstitial HTML Web
page". I am not suggesting that we mandate the look and feel of these
interaction messages, just the communication channel that they use.

4.1.4: In this case proxies may for the sake of consistency of
representation serve stale data but when doing so should *notify the
user* that this is the case
4.1.4: and must *provide a simple means*
4.1.5.3: must, [...], *inform the user* of that and *allow them* to select
4.2.2: Proxies must *provide a means for users* to express preferences
4.2.2: Proxies must *solicit re-expression of preferences*
4.2.3: proxies [...] must *provide the option for the user* to continue
with unaltered content
4.2.9.1: It should *indicate to the user* that the content has been
transformed
4.2.9.3: it must *advise the user* of the security implications of doing so
4.2.9.3: it must *provide the option* to bypass it
4.2.9.3: proxies must *notify the user* of invalid server certificates

Francois.

[1]
http://www.w3.org/2006/02/lc-comments-tracker/37584/WD-ct-guidelines-20091006/2317
[2]
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-bpwg-comments/2009OctDec/0068.html

Received on Tuesday, 8 December 2009 22:27:31 UTC