Re: Multi-channel content

On Wed, Feb 18, 2004 at 09:02:40AM -0000, Rhys Lewis wrote:
> that there is also customer demand for products that deliver content
> and applications over multiple channels. Applications have been built
> that deliver content across multiple channels and multiple modalities
> using techniques that are affordable for authors.

What applications ? Is at it as easy as writing XHTML? And I hope they
are as affordable as in free.

> applications across a range of devices. DIWG's view is that current
> standards are not sufficient to support authors adequately.

I agree. But is CC/PP the right direction?

> On your comment about XHTML, while it is certainly possible to create
> XHTML documents that can be delivered to a range of XHTML compatible
> devices, this does not solve the problem of device independence.
> First, XHTML is not universally supported. XHTML documents are
> unusable on WML devices, for example. Not only are there literally
> millions of web capable, WML wireless handsets in daily use around the
> world, there are also millions of digital interactive television
> systems that are based on extensions of WML. And, by the way, there is

I have never seen a HTML device having problems rendering XHTML. CSS is
another matter. 

As for WML. Well, that's a complete failure imo! It's not such a big
concern, as you must remember these WML devices are consumer devices
which can't upgrade and get thrown away when their battery dies after
3-4 years. 

> are subset issues. Some devices support CSS 1, others CSS 2, still

What can we do about poor user agents? Give the author more challenges?
It was hard enough with Netscape and IE a couple of years back. :/

> handsets to PC's and workstations. Even if you could send the same
> XHTML to them all, these differences in physical characteristics mean
> that the likelihood of a pleasing user experience is diminished.

If I can read my XHTML homepage in any device on a Nokia 6600, Palm III,
webTV and of course a workstation. That's accessibility and at least for
me, that is a pleasing user experience.

> its capabilities, to make the pages very small and to avoid use of
> even basic features such as forms. XHTML forms are very device

I think the web medium for interactive pages should be small. Filling in
forms extend down the page is turn off for me on a workstation.

For longer pages, well hopefully RSS can perhaps fill in there. I look
to blogs and such things as examples of bite sized quality information.

> specific, by the way. You probably have to avoid any images or other
> rich media content as well, because of the variability of display size
> and support on different XHTML capable devices.

We all know how badly bitmaps scale, so I don't see the big deal in
leaving them out (the mobile domain) until we get SVG support. 

> To me, that doesn't sound like a description of a 'well designed'
> XHTML page. It is also not very promising for delivery of
> applications, only the simplest, least formatted, fixed content.

If you pick up a newspaper or a magazine, you will observe similarities
between the medium. The web I hope will one day settle down on simple
and accessible, CSS formatted, concise content conventions. 

> supports delivery of content across multiple channels, Volantis
> maintains a substantial body of information on close to 1000 web
> capable devices and device families. Other suppliers have to do this

Could I get access to this information for study? I must say the
manufacturers including Nokia could do a much better job of discerning
information about their devices. For Nokia, they have details in a
inaccessible PDF matrix. :/

> for situations where modality changes with use. Taking a voice-enabled
> browser into a library, or taking a display-enabled device into a car
> are examples where the user's environment may constrain the device
> modality, for example.

I would love to see a decent voice-enabled browser or implementation.
Right now I think there are bigger fish to fry. Getting the right text
everywhere is much more important. A killer app would be one that
transcribes voice to text ! 

> to the huge variety of devices that are now web capable. The challenge
> is to support authors to create content that can be delivered this way
> so that the web remains as close as possible to a single, seamless
> entity accessible by anyone from anywhere with whatever device suits
> them. CC/PP is a key component of this kind of capability, as are

I really disagree here. I maintain lots of webpages. Maybe I am too
grass roots, but CC/PP sounds like a huge challenge not support for what
I want to accomplish. The whole reason why the web is so fascinating to
me and others, is that it (was) so easy to publish.

> forthcoming versions of XHTML and the recently announced XForms
> recommendation. DIWG is working on the additional modules that will
> help make creation of multichannel content more affordable for
> authors.

I hope they're also affordable for the likes of the current mobile
market leader Nokia to implement, considering they are only right now
pulling off subsets of XHTML and CSS1 on their "next generation"
platform.

> find it instructive to try and write at least part of your thesis in
> XHTML that could be used across a range of devices from PC's to small
> mobile handsets with restricted memory, and to try and get an
> acceptable user experience on all of them.

I will hope to write about my 60 page thesis in bite size entries on my
blog [1]. Different mediums. ;)

> common outside. I'm tempted to say that these days it is rather device
> specific for postscript printers! I had to move it to a UNIX machine
> to access them. PDF is also a reasonable and fairly device-independent

All printers generally do postscript. :) Since you are probably running
proprietary software, here is a link to the larger PDF version [2].

[1] http://www.natalian.org/archives/category/mobile/
[2] http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/hendry/work/thesis/topic/report.pdf

Received on Wednesday, 18 February 2004 11:45:52 UTC