Re: Restructuring of the learning material Wiki

D'you, I know you are right!

The main reason I was thinking of it as a separate course is because I was asked by a university in Mexico to produce material for a course on mobile development, and I thought it was a nice idea to create this course and make it available to all on W3C. But we could still achieve both. We could bake our cross device principles into our learning material, but also create a cross device development curriculum that brings together the different appropriate elements form the learnin material as required.

See below for the current suggestion for the mobile course, along with notes on how they possibly be incorporated into the main series of articles.

The basics 

Mobile beginnings: An introduction to the mobile web (include history of mobiles, how mobile networks work, what the hardware looks like, what the software looks like)  - THIS IS POSSIBLE A BIT OUT OF SCOPE, AND COULD BE DITCHED

What do the devices look like? (a fairly detailed reference showing the types of devices you are likely to need to support when building cross device adaptive apps) - THIS IS POSSIBLY OUT OF SCOPE, AND COULD BE DITCHED

Mobile constraints and advantages (what are the constraints you need to work around for alternative browsing devices? What are the advantages, eg the context specific technologies you can take advantage of?) - THIS IS POSSIBLY OUT OF SCOPE AND COULD BE DITCHED

THE ABOVE THREE ARTICLES COULD HAVE THEIR RELEVANT MATERIAL EXTRACTED AND PUT TOGETHER INTO A SINGLE ARTICLE TITLED "ONE WEB, MANY DEVICES", PLACED INSIDE http://www.w3.org/wiki/Web_Standards_Curriculum#Introduction_to_the_world_of_web_standards

WE SHOULD ALSO SAY SOMETHING ABOUT SEMANTICS AND DIVERSE DEVICES IN http://www.w3.org/wiki/The_web_standards_model_-_HTML_CSS_and_JavaScript

Adaptive design and development 

Mobile friendly: an introduction to mobile web design (start with a basis of semantic HTML, accessibility best practices are Making an app or site mobile friendly - do you create a different site, or do you adapt your existing site for mobile? A brief introduction to Adaptive design - graceful degradation, progressive enhancement, using media queries and viewport to adapt layout, using feature detection to server appropriate content and services, NOT browser sniffing!) - A LOT OF THIS CAN BE SAID IN OTHER ARTICLES, FOR EXAMPLE THE MEDIA QUERIES AND VIEWPORT ARTICLES

Designing a mobile user experience (all about context, what does the user want to do in this context, how does it differ from the desktop, etc.?) THIS CAN BE COVERED IN THE SECTION http://www.w3.org/wiki/WSC_proposed_updates#Planned_New_section_to_replace_.22Web_Design_Concepts.22_-_to_be_called_.22Planning_a_web_site.22

Optimising CSS and JavaScript for mobile  - THIS STUFF SHOULD JUSTBE SAID IN THE CSS/JS SECTIONS

Media Queries 
Viewport 
Adaptive layouts for mobile (apply the basics you learned in the last two) - THESE THREE CAN BE PLACED IN THE CSS SECTION - http://www.w3.org/wiki/Web_Standards_Curriculum#CSS

Device aware apps (Geolocation, etc.)  - THIS CAN BE COMBINED WITH THE GEOLOCATION ARTICLE IN http://www.w3.org/wiki/WSC_proposed_updates#HTML5_APIS

Multimedia on mobile (dealing with images, video, audio)  - I NEED TO ADD AN <AUDIO>/<VIDEO> ARTICLE TO THE http://www.w3.org/wiki/Web_Standards_Curriculum#The_HTML_body SECTION

Offline apps for mobile (web storage, AppCache, WebSQL) - CAN BE ADDED TO THE http://www.w3.org/wiki/WSC_proposed_updates#HTML5_APIS SECTION

Putting together a mobile testing suite - NOT SURE ABOUT WHERE TO PUT THIS ONE.

OTHER ARTICLE SUGGESTIONS:

* WE'D PROBABLY BETTER INCLUDE AN ARTICLE ON FEATURE DETECTION, POLYFILLING, AND OTHER MODERN CROSS BROWSER TECHNIQUES

ANY OTHER THOUGHTS - WHAT DO YOU THINK?

On 30 Sep 2011, at 13:17, Lewis Nyman wrote:

> "Mobile Web" is a buzzword right now. I'd happily throw it  out in a client meeting the same I would throw out "HTML5 Web app". 
> 
> In this context I'd like to push for something more progressive. We aren't trying to sell a bid here. We are defining a curriculum for future professionals. It could pay to be forward thinking about this.
> 
> I'm not against "Mobile and cross device web development" but I do wonder how meaningful that term will become in a few years time. "Beyond the Desktop: developing for all devices" or something similar might be an opportunity to redefine the concept to be more descriptive.
> 
> Or we could take this even further, how many years away are we from traditional desktops and laptops no longer being the primary device from which to browse the web? We could bake our cross device principles in to the whole curriculum instead of confining it to one section.
> 
> I'd be interested to know what you think.
> 
> Lewis Nyman
> 07753103690
> www.lewisnyman.co.uk
> twitter.com/lewisnyman
> 
> 
> On 30 September 2011 12:36, Chris Mills <cmills@opera.com> wrote:
> Thanks Lewis - you've made a good point here. Opera advocates one web too, and I personally strongly agree with this standpoint. I think some of the article descriptions therefore need to be rewritten slightly to take into account diverse devices rather than just "mobiles".
> 
> The main reason I called it "Mobile web development" is because regardless of what we think, or what is accurate or right, "mobile web" is a big buzz word that will attract people to this section. When we have got them there, we can educate them towards progressive enhancement, adaptive design and feature detection, and away from mobile specific sites and browser detection. But a buzz term is always useful for grabbing people, usually people who should know better and need to be educated ;-)
> 
> So what about "Mobile and cross device web development"?
> 
> On 30 Sep 2011, at 12:20, Lewis Nyman wrote:
> 
>> This looks really good Chris. I'm wondering how relatable the "Mobile Web" section is in contrast with the "One Web" approach the W3C advocates? 
>> 
>> The definition section of mobile web actually ends up undefining the phrase. Maybe it's worth renaming the whole section "Cross Device Development" or something similar? With the "Mobile Device" market becoming more and more diverse maybe we need to publish techniques towards device agnostic development.
>> 
>> Lewis Nyman
>> 07753103690
>> www.lewisnyman.co.uk
>> twitter.com/lewisnyman
>> 
>> 
>> On 30 September 2011 10:59, Chris Mills <cmills@opera.com> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> I've been in and restructured the web standards curriculum Wiki page - see http://www.w3.org/wiki/Web_Standards_Curriculum
>> 
>> I removed everything that was half finished/in process/in idea form and put it on to the proposed updated page:
>> 
>> http://www.w3.org/wiki/WSC_proposed_updates
>> 
>> Can I ask anyone who has an interest to look over the different sections and fill them out with article ideas?
>> 
>> I am pretty proficient in the realm of HTML/CSS/Accessibility/Mobile, but I definitely want to find people to add ideas to:
>> 
>> http://www.w3.org/wiki/WSC_proposed_updates#OTHER_THINGS_TO_COVER (especially SVG - please grab it and roll it out to it's own section. Doug? Jeremie?)
>> 
>> http://www.w3.org/wiki/WSC_proposed_updates#HTML5_APIS (someone please grab Canvas and give it it's own section! Does anyone feel like writing any of these?)
>> 
>> http://www.w3.org/wiki/WSC_proposed_updates#Accessibility_specifics (I know a fair amount about a11y, but I'm sure Shawn and others on the list who know more than me can improve things)
>> 
>> Also feel free to add other ideas if you think anything is missing.
>> 
>> Chris Mills
>> Open standards evangelist and dev.opera.com editor, Opera Software
>> Co-chair, web education community group, W3C
>> 
>> * Try Opera: http://www.opera.com
>> * Learn about the latest open standards technologies and techniques: http://dev.opera.com
>> * Contribute to web education: http://www.w3.org/community/webed/
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
>