Proposed blog post about mobileOK Basic Tests implementation

On the last BPWG call, I volunteered to write a blog post about our
work on implementing mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0. Here's the text -- any
mistakes or edits? suggestions?


Towards a Common mobileOK Basic Tests Implementation

To paraphrase the book title: all I really need to know about HTML I
learned from the W3C validator. The specification is of course
necessary, but as a developer, I'm usually more interested in whether
my particular document follows the spec, and if not why not, and how I
can fix it, and I'm usually interested in knowing this right now. The
supporting validation tool is almost all you need to practice good
HTML. It's vital to provide tools like this to bring specifications to
life and make them practical for the developer community. So, it's
time we followed suit.

We've created the Best Practices recommendation, and have nearly
finalized the mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0 recommendation. It describes
automated tests for mobile content in pseudo-code, which is
practically begging for an implementation in software. We sincerely
believe in our recommendations and want to add value for developers,
not just list a bunch of ideas. So, we've begun to create a reference
implementation of mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0.

Fortunately several groups had already begun this independently. Dom
created an early implementation of some tests at
http://validator.w3.org/mobile/. dotMobi has released
http://ready.mobi, which implements many mobileOK Basic tests (among
other tests). Fundacion CTIC has developed an implementation at
http://validadores.tawdis.net/mobileok/.

Why create another implementation? we want to create an open-source,
reusable library that combines the strengths of all these
implementations. Fortunately, the developers behind *all three* of
these are involved in the collaborative effort within BPWG to build a
reference implementation. By creating an open, generic library, we
enable developers to embed this suite of tests in tools, run a private
instance, help enhance and fix the code, or even build new tools off
of it.

It's an international effort, with five active developers already from
Germany, Spain, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. I
must say I'm pleased to see how open everyone has been about
contributing time, code and experience. It's also great to see how
well the W3C can incubate collaborative development efforts like this.

You can see our work to date in CVS at
http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/2007/mobileok-ref/. It's a Java- and
XSL-based implementation. You can follow or join in the discussion on
the public-mobileok-checker mailing list; you can join or view
archives at http://lists.w3.org. We're working towards a first "alpha"
release in mid-July, at which point you'll hear from us again since
we'll need everyone's help to play-test this thing. Watch this space
for more.

Received on Friday, 1 June 2007 16:14:49 UTC