Re: Retiring the mobileOK checker

Hi Dom,
My 2 cents...

I think it would be a shame to lose the mobileOK checker so soon, but that it should maybe be reframed slightly.

The default delivery context was always (IMHO) a bit complicated for people to contextualize and was rapidly obsolete...inasmuch as aspects of the checklist were rendered moot or irrelevant, even though as a whole, the mobileOk checker was not.

A few weeks ago my company was approached by a startup working on a service for sub-saharan Africa. They had chosen to focus service delivery on a combination of SMS and XHTML MP. This was the first time in many years that we had even thought about writing XHTML MP compatible markup, and found that *very* few relevant resources were left online. Just this weekend, Nokia also removed the last of their Symbian and S40 pre-Asha resources from developer.nokia.com. Their free to download set of XHTML MP templates have now also disappeared. I have no idea if these resources will be archived elsewhere, but it's quite possible they won't given that "Nokia devices" is now entirely Windows and Asha focussed. 

This leaves us with precious little in the way of resources to support people building simple web based services for the remaining billions of feature phone users. Feature phone sales are (finally) on the decline, and XHTML MP browsers are equally so (modern devices often now ship with some manner of proxy browser or basic HTML 4 browser), but it will still be years before we can write off older or more basic devices off entirely.

From this perspective, it might be nice to keep the mobileOK checker active, but maybe clarify that the only relevant context at this point is the support of highly constrained devices (typically feature phone...although this definition may be a bit simplistic). 

Steph

http://stephanierieger.com
http://www.slideshare.net/yiibu
http://yiibu.com

On 4 Feb 2014, at 08:52, Dominique Hazael-Massieux wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> The mobileOK checker is now some 7 years old, and the usage of the Web
> on mobile devices has changed a lot (to put it mildly). As a result,
> while some of the points that the checker raise are still relevant, many
> are not and end up being confusing to its users.
> 
> There has been only very limited resources available to maintain (let
> alone further develop) the mobileOK checker; I failed a couple of years
> ago to lead to completion an effort to overhaul it into a more useful
> tool: https://www.w3.org/wiki/Mobile_checker
> 
> I am therefore suggesting that the current public mobileOK checker
> service [1] provided by W3C should be retired; my current plan is to
> post a notice to that effect on the checker home page for about a month,
> before pulling the plug.
> 
> I welcome any feedback on that plan.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Dom
> 
> 1. http://validator.w3.org/mobile/
> 
> 
>