RE: Overview of W3C technologies for mobile Web applications

Hi Dom,

It looks quite nice as a way to organize a large lot of information. I'm sure I will be making use of this often as I seem often to get confused by the number of W3C projects on going and the proper jurisdiction as specific concerns may arise. A couple of quick reactions:

I'm not sure I see a place for time-series data such as covered in InkML. InkML is very interesting for data visualization efforts, particularly with regard to animation and geolocation. I also don't see MathML anywhere, or has no one yet attempted it in the mobile environment?

Just a couple of quibbles from the SVG perspective: There are a few places in the table where specific functionalities have been broken out and assigned to some technology, where, depending on one's purposes another technology might be preferred. 

For example: rounded corners, complex background images and box shadow effects are just as well the purview of SVG as of CSS, at least in my mind, though admittedly the applicability from CSS (to either HTML or SVG or MathML. Is someone likely to look at this table to get advice on where to turn to accomplish a given effect? If so, then pointing them in more than one direction might be useful.

Under animations in your table, it seems like both SVG/animation and SMIL should be listed in addition to CSS. The SVG/SMIL animate module is probably more mature, widely implemented, and powerful than the CSS business. 

In discussion of fonts, SVG fonts has a more powerful model than WOFF, allowing broader extensibility as well as interactive fonts (defined dynamically in the browser). While they are downloadable (as in bundle-able in one's document) they need not be, and are hence of greater potential utility to the mobile community.

Under Image & Video analysis and modification, you mention SVG filters in the discussion at top, but in the table, only HTML Canvas/2D Context is mentioned. What if someone only looks in the table to find the row that they are interested in, and concludes "aha! this must be the way to filter video?"

It looks as though your table attempts to provide a one-to-one mapping from functionality to Working Groups, but the proper relationship may be one-to-many owing to the zeal of some of the working groups.

One other comment: much of what you've listed here is just as relevant to the browser community as to the mobile community. Would a minor expansion of scope and effort suffice to make a roadmap that is relevant to both?

Regards
David

-----Original Message-----
From: public-html-request@w3.org [mailto:public-html-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Dominique Hazael-Massieux
Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2011 10:04 AM
To: public-webapps
Subject: Overview of W3C technologies for mobile Web applications

(bcc to public-html and public-device-apis; please follow-up on
public-webapps)

Hi,

As part of a European research project I'm involved in [1], I've
compiled a report on the existing technologies in development (or in
discussion) at W3C for building Web applications and that are
particularly relevant on mobile devices:
http://www.w3.org/2011/02/mobile-web-app-state.html


It is meant as a picture of the current state as of today, based on my
own (necessarily limited) knowledge of the specifications and their
current implementations.

I'm very much looking for feedback on the document, the mistakes it most
probably contains, its overall organization, its usefulness.

I can also look into moving it in a place where a larger community could
edit it (dvcs.w3.org, or www.w3.org/wiki/ for instance) if anyone is
interested in contributing.

I'll likely publish regular updates to the document (e.g. every 3
months?), esp. if it helps sufficiently many people to understand our
current ongoing activities in this space.

Thanks,

Dom

1. http://mobiwebapp.eu/

Received on Thursday, 24 February 2011 18:02:13 UTC