Re: Draft of Second Screen Presentation Working Group Charter available (was: Heads-Up: Plan for Working Group on Second Screen Presentation)

On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 12:52 AM, Kostiainen, Anssi <
anssi.kostiainen@intel.com> wrote:

> Hi MarkF, All,
>
>
> > (2) In the two-UA case, the charter hints that the software controlling
> the remote screen is capable of displaying arbitrary Web content.  However,
> this is not always the case; there are a large number of devices (e.g.,
> smart TVs, digital picture frames, set-top boxes) that can display a fixed
> set of "apps" or Web media types.  As there are millions of these devices
> deployed, we feel the charter should be written so as not leave these out.
>
> I’m hearing we should clarify what is the definition of the User Agent,
> and make it clear that the primary device in the charter is an User Agent.
> Some specifications talk explicitly about an HTML User Agent to refer to
> web browsers explicitly. In the proposed charter we use the User Agent
> term, for which the established definitions reads as follows:
>
> [[
>
> A user agent is any software that retrieves, renders and facilitates
> end-user interaction with web content. User agents include web browsers,
> media players, plug-ins, extension and web applications that help in
> retrieving, rendering and interacting with web content.
>
> http://www.w3.org/TR/UAAG20/#introduction
>
> ]]
>
>
​I share the same concern as MarkF here. I think the concern is more
regarding the second screen, not the controlling device (primary device,
right?). The controlling device is clearly running a User Agent in the
normal sense (a browser - note that despite the definition above, UA is
commonly used to refer to a browser that supports the W3C Web Platform
specifications).

However, as MarkF points out, the second screen may be running a set of
"apps" that support a restricted set of content. Although such apps do fall
under the definition of UA above (they could be called 'media players'),
the use of the term User Agent to refer to them could be confusing. The
requirement that the second screen support "HTML pages" is in conflict with
this use-case, since such apps support specific media types or services.

I haven't seen MarkF's proposed changes, but I expect what we should do is
ensue that we use the more general term "web content" for what is being
rendered on the second screen, rather than "HTML pages" specifically and we
should explicitly include the requirement to support interaction with
second screens that are restricted in the content that they can render, for
example where the second screen supports a fixed set of apps for particular
content types and / or services. As Mark says, there are millions of such
devices deployed and (primary device) UAs that can already interact with
them.

...Mark