W3C: Building the Mobile Web

Dr. Philipp Hoschka
Deputy Director for Europe/Interaction Domain Leader
W3C, France

3GSM World Congress, Cannes, France, Feb 2004

What is W3C ?

• Founded by Tim Berners-Lee, Web Inventor
• Mission: Lead the Web to its Full Potential
• About 400 members (ATT, Avaya, Adobe, Apple, Alcatel, Ericsson, France Telecom, J-Phone, KDDI, Nokia, Nortel, NTT Docomo, Openwave, Philips, RealNetworks, SBC, Sony, T-Mobile, ...)
• Specifications: XML, (X)HTML, SMIL, SVG, VoiceXML, Semantic Web, ...
• Around 70 full time team members

W3C Standards

• Vendor-neutral
• Royalty-free goal
• Implementable
• Internationalized
• Accessible

W3C Mobile Work: Four Phases

The HTML Phase

• "HDML - Handheld Device Markup Language Submission" (1997)
  • W3C submission
  • Became WAP WML 1.0 (Europe, US)
• "Compact HTML" (1998)
  • W3C submission
  • Became i-mode (Japan, Europe)
• "XHTML Basic" (2000) - W3C Recommendation
  • W3C Recommendation
  • Became WAP 2.0 (2001)
• Today: Widespread (X)HTML support in mobile phones

The Multimedia Phase: MMS

• Multimedia Messaging

  

W3C Multimedia Messaging Standards

• Timing: SMIL Basic (2001)
  • adopted in MMS SMIL
  • adopted in 3GPP SMIL (2002/03)
• Graphics: SVG Mobile (2003)
• Ongoing: Timed Text (2003)

Mobile SVG

• SVG brings 2D vector graphics to the Mobile Web
• Several implementations exist already (Windows CE, Symbian, for J2ME…)
• Part of 3GPP MMS (Version 5 and 6)
• Mobile SVG becomes the vector graphics tool for Mobile!

The Device Independence Phase: Issues

• More and more devices
  • Different characteristics
  • One site per device expensive
• Single Authoring: Author once, view anywhere

Device Independence: CC/PP

• Adapt content based on delivery context
• CC/PP ("Client Capabilities/Preferences Profile")
• Idea: Describe client environment
  • Hardware (screen-size etc.)
  • Software (OS, browser version etc.)
  • User preferences (Audio on/off)
• Base technology for UAPROF

Device Independence: Authoring

• Integrate adaptation markup into content
  • Tests on delivery context
  • Stylesheets
  • ...
• Ongoing work

The Multimodal Phase: Issues

• Mobile keyboards hard to use
  • "Thumbs are the new fingers"
  • Reason: SMS, Gameboy, ...
• Multimodal: Input technologies suitable for mobile
  • Voice
  • Handwriting
  • Gesture
  • ...

W3C Multimodal Interaction Framework

Multimodal: Speech Recognition

• W3C speech interface framework
  • SRGS — markup for speech grammars
  • SSML — markup for speech synthesis
  • VoiceXML — markup for voice dialogs
• Voice browsers: growing industry

Multimodal: InkML

• XML markup for input data from electronic pen or stylus
• Enables handwriting-recognition

<traceFormat>
  <regularChannels>
     <channel name="X" type="decimal">
     <channel name="Y" type="decimal">
  </regularChannels>
  <intermittentChannels>
     <channel name="S1" type="boolean" default="F"/>
     <channel name="S2" type="boolean" default="F"/>
  </intermittentChannels>
</traceFormat>

<trace id = "4525BCD">
1125 18432'23'43"7"-8 3-5+7  -3+6+2+6 8+3+6:T;+2+4:*T;+3+6+3-6:FF;
</trace>

Multimodal: EMMA

• Input device produces one or more results
• These results are annotated by intermediaries (device info, confidence scores)

<emma:emma xmlns:emma="..." xmlns="...">
   <!-- mutually exclusive interpretations -->
   <emma:one-of
      emma:start="2004-02-18T0:00:0.15"
      emma:end="2004-02-18T0:00:0.2">
      <emma:interpretation emma:id="i1" emma:confidence="0.8"> 
         <destination emma:mode="ink">Budapest</destination>
         <make-reservation>true</make-reservation>
      </emma:interpretation>
      <emma:interpretation emma:id="i2" emma:confidence="0.4">
        <destination emma:mode="ink">Bucarest</destination>
        <make-reservation>true</make-reservation>
      </emma:interpretation>
   </emma:one-of>
</emma:emma>

Multimodal: Conclusion

• The MMI framework is well advanced
• Reuses established W3C Speech recognition work
• Parts are beginning to be defined formally in specs (Ink, EMMA)

Summary: W3C as Mobile Technology Leader

• Mobile is where new Web developments happen !
• Growing number of mobile W3C specifications:
  XHTML Basic, SMIL Basic, SVG Tiny, CC/PP, InkML, MMI, ...
• Next big step: Multimodal

W3C Membership

• Benefits
  • W3C WG participation
  • Member submission
  • Access to W3C Member site
  • Right to use W3C Member logo
  • Seat on W3C Advisory Committee
  • "Networking" with Web "movers and shakers"
• Cost
  • $5K/year
  • for profit, revenue >$ 50 Mill: $50K