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
J2MEβ¦)
- 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 β markup for speech grammars
- SSML β markup for speech synthesis
- VoiceXML β 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