Re: New working draft: CSS mobile profile

> A new WD has been published: "CSS Mobile Profile 1.0"
>     http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/WD-css-mobile-20001013
> The abstract says:
>     This specification defines a subset of the Cascading Style Sheets
>     Level 2 specification tailored to the needs and constraints of
>     mobile devices.
> As the abstract indicates, this is connected with CSS2, not 3, and
> thus it is a slightly different kind of draft than the ones about
> CSS3.

Interesting draft: if only for the fact that it seems "out of place". It's a
WD, but it's connected with something that is already a specification: CSS2.
Why is it not being developed as a collection of CSS3 modules?
"This specification defines a subset of the Cascading Style Sheets Level 2
specification tailored to the needs and constraints of mobile devices."
But a lot of the content of the spec. defines things that will not be able
to be styled by *most* wireless UAs for some time now!
For example: "background-image", "cursor", ":hover" etc.
Working in the mobile sector as I do, I really think some thought should be
put into any future versons of this.
At the moment, iMode and WAP are the main Wireless protocols, and they use
cHTML and WML respectively. WML2 will probably be Modularization based, but
I am not even sure that WAP Forum will attach styling capabilities to it!
"This is a working draft of the CSS Mobile Profile specification. It is
guaranteed to change [...]"
Good, but I think this version was released too soon. Strangely enough, it
was written by authors from Phone.com, Motorola, and Ericsson; so they
probably should know better (actually, I recognize the authors as being
experts in the field, so I presume they are aware of the points I am raising
here anyway). WAP just can't handle (too much) style at the moment.
I think the amount of properties should be cut down somewhat. Don't forget,
mobile devices have very limited memory and processing capabilities. Some
won't even be able to hold large stylesheets in stack.
Plus, there is the need to develop this with WAP Forum, in case they don't
bother to support it!

On the plus side, this subset does give us chances to create new styles for
wireless specific devices. We can attach styles to the terrible form
implementation in WML, for example (although they will almost certainly
change it after the current fiasco).

Kindest Regards,
Sean B. Palmer
President and Founder
WAP Tech Info - http://www.waptechinfo.com/

Received on Friday, 13 October 2000 16:44:31 UTC