Goals of task force: report and architecture

Hi,

The goal of the task force is to get W3C management
approval for resources to develop and maintain an updated mobile checker
that would replace the existing mobileOK checker:
http://validator.w3.org/mobile/

The motivation for that is that mobile devices are increasingly a
favored way for users to access Web content, but that producing
mobile-friendly Web content remains something most Web developers find
difficult and would need more guidance for.

To that end, we need to produce at least a report that documents:
* the state of the current situation (i.e. the existing mobileOK checker
and its shortcomings)
* what's needed to fix the situation: what kind of resources, for how
long, what changes do we foresee, etc

An important piece of this is that we need to have a near-final version
of that report in time for the Advisory Committee meeting in Sophia;
given that the AC meeting is scheduled on May 13-15, and to leave enough
time for AC Reps to read our report, I think we should target to have a
reasonably good report ready by end of April, i.e. 5 weeks from now.

During the AC meeting, our task force will have a break out session to
present our work and get input from participants.

After the AC meeting, we'll have until end of June to finalize the
report based on the input we would get during the AC, and I'll be
presenting the outcome of our work to the W3C Management team during
their annual F2F on July 10-11. W3M will then decide whether or not to
allocate funds for the work.

In terms of how we will do that work, my current proposal is that we do
most of the discussions on the mailing list; we may organize a few calls
if we need to converge on some topics, but given my current and upcoming
availabilities, the fewer calls, the better for me.

I propose that we write the report in the W3C wiki:
http://www.w3.org/wiki/Mobile_checker to which anyone with a W3C account
has write access.

I would like us to look carefully at:
* the current limitations of the existing tool
* better evaluating the resources needed to update the checker
* defining how we can engage the community at large in
developing/maintaining/feeding the tool
* what requirements we want for the updated checker (in particular with
regard to the users of the existing mobileok checker)
* a rough architecture of the new checker
* a rough list of what the new checker should check
* ideally, an early prototype of that new tool

I have already ideas on most of these topics, that I'll post in separate
messages ; but ideas and feedback on those would be useful if you
already have some.

Thanks again!

Dom

Received on Monday, 26 March 2012 13:07:28 UTC