RE: general questions

-----Original Message-----
From: Butler, Mark [mailto:Mark_Butler@hplb.hpl.hp.com]
Sent: 23 May 2002 18:00
To: 'Stan@rga.com'; www-mobile@w3.org
Subject: RE: general questions



>> Just from looking at UAprof I can tell cases where it
>> doesn't completely cover the device. Most of browseres have 
>> anomalies not described in the profiles, i.e. a) WML lets you 
>> specify a title of deck, but certain browser (all UP <5) just 
>> don't display them and b.) WML lets you create numbered lists 
>> but certain browsers don't display them or only the first line. 
>> I'm sure that you will discover the same thing when you start
>> using i-mode devices and handhelds.  I'm very much aware that 
>> these are details, my point and question is: Is or will there be a 
>> testing environment where these standards will be tested in a 
>> real world environment? 

>I think the best way to fix these type of problems would be to have
tighter
>standards for browsers. 

In an ironic way, this is somewhat true:  The greater uniformity in the
PC world is not because of W3C standards - it is because a competitive
battle was largely won by one big browser and that browser has become a
de facto standard. 

>I know that doesn't help you deploy services today,
>but I have an expectation that as phones move over to XHTML and CSS
>hopefully many of these problems will go away. However phones will
always
>have smaller screens, less capable input etc than PCs etc whereas
>interactive TVs will also have bigger screens but poorer input. So I
>envision CC/PP being used to allow content to delivered to all
categories of
>information appliances i.e. true device independence. 

Adoption of XHTML and CSS will not in themselves resolve these issues.
Some of us who have closely examined XHTML browsers can see divergence
in implementation. As XHTML gets a larger foothold one can expect that
browser vendors will create their own modules ( it's extensible !). Yeah
sure document profiles will help in the latter but they will not really
help developers in getting the coverage they want. At the end of the day
this is not about technology, it is about commerce. Mobile browser
manufacturers and device manufactures have interpreted standards in the
way they wish and in some cases for competitive advantage have
introduced enhancements that make it impossible to use content developed
for one browser on another. Their rational is that this is a competitive
strategy for market dominance. 

>Having said that, you could use CC/PP to do this if you wanted to - you
>would just need to add extra attributes to your profile to describe the
>properties you mention. Alternatively you could try one of the
proprietary
>device capability databases where someone else has already done the
hard
>work and collected this information for you.

If you use CC/PP for this you are adding an overhead to your processing.
There are circumstances under which you may wish to do this. But for the
case where I am using CC/PP to take data from elsewhere, I am not sure
that I would at the origin end (my end) put my new attributes in a CC/PP
syntax just to parse again ....

Vidhya

Received on Tuesday, 28 May 2002 06:40:16 UTC