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Obigo AB Position Paper for the "W3C Mobile Web Initiative Workshop"
- Claes Nilsson, Obigo
Develops application software for mobile phones, including a browser.
Which type of device do you prefer for accessing the Web? Lots
of different kinds of devices are now available. For smaller
devices we need to focus on the unique benefits of mobile access.
Today downloading of media (ring tones, images, music, games etc.)
is more popular than web browsing. Entertainment more than serious
services. Always on/always reachable opens opportunity for pushing
teasing material to users. Mobile users don't surf around and
just use a few sites.
Q: why do users not surf around?
A: poor response times and a matter of convenience
Q: don't you have a cost issue too?
A: yes, but that may change in the future
Q: the fact that people don't surf around is really a symptom, right?
A: yes, that's a good point
Mobile specific features: location dependent services, access to
device features, such as telephony, user's address book etc.
Mobile rendering of desktop content suffers from a lack of
standards. Best results if content adaptation is the responsibility
of the content author.
Q: is the content author, the owner of the URL, the aggregator or
the original content provider?
A: the content publisher
Q: Benett Marks: the whole chain can help with adaptation.
Q: Rotan: agrees that there are many people involved in creating and
delivering content
Q: Stephane Maes: the term content author is a little misleading.
It is a matter of providing information that can then be used later
on in the chain.
A: Okay. Our main message is that the content sent to the device
shouldn't be content designed just for the desktop.
Q: Ken: ...
Q: BBC: we really mean the content owner
Q: Keith: we mainly see the general public on our site ...
Q: George: you need to educate the content developers ...
Q: It is the responsibility of all of us to help with that
Q: Orange: ring tones are a huge business based upon the ubiquity
of SMS which works on every device. The content has to be optimized
for mobile devices, but we need to ensure that it works across all
devices not just a small fraction of them.
Q: Adobe: we are more concerned about how you empower people
to leverage existing content
However, we don't' want to split the Web into a fixed and mobile
domain. We want standards based solutions rather than fragmented
browser specific adaptation on the device itself.
Claes shows some examples of CSS media rules @screen, @handheld.
Q: doesn't style sheets preclude server-side adaptation?
A: not necessarily, we need to explore this more
Q: you need to think more about the service and designing it
for mobile user rather than just pixel shuffling.
Q: Stephane B: there are other factors than just mobile/desktop
A: yes, that brings us to the next slide ...
Device adaptation must be simple! UAProf hasn't taken off,
perhaps it is too complex?
Q: can you explain more about UAProf not taking off? Orange uses
it extensively.
A: our impression is that few sites are using it.
Q: Vodafone use a proprietary data source as we feel that UAProf
doesn't meet our needs. We have a timeslot for this after lunch
Q: Stephane: the URI for UAProf often doesn't resolve to a UAProf
document.
Q: Bennett: UAProf doesn't fit well with the value chain. One
member puts the work in and the benefit accrues to others. The
cost/benefit balance must apply all the way along the chain.
Obigo believes that new technology is not needed. Rather
we need to educate people how to use existing standards.
Mobile user experience is different from fixed user experience.
Mobile devices and networks are still more limited that fixed
networks. We need to focus on the enhanced possibilities that
mobile offers.
Q: Doug: aren't there going to be some gaps where new technology
is needed?
A: yes there may be a few, but we need to build on what we already
have
Q: what is missing in the industry to make this happen?
A: authoring tools for one
Q: Johan: re: the value chain isn't correctly configured. In Japan,
operators share more money with the content developer and as a
result there are lots and lots of services.
Sony Ericsson position paper - Mobile Web Initiative Workshop
- Peter Stark, Sony Ericsson
I have been involved in the mobile web since the early days of
work on the WAP standards. Describes the new capabilities
provided by mobile implementation of W3C technologies like
SVG.
Browsing is not a key use case. Users don't want to search for
information. Useful mobile sites are rare. Few use mobile portals
and little effort is put into them by portal owners.
What is being used are web albums for uploading and sharing
pictures. Similarly photo services for ordering prints.
Personal radio where users interaction to select preferred
style of music. Online music stores for ring tones and more.
Another trend is push based services. channels for personalized
news. Example technologies RSS and Macromedia FlashCast.
A move away from hypertext to interactive graphics.
Seamless integration with phone GUI, not Web pages.
Users don't want to click through a hierarchy of pages. They
have had the capability to do so for several years.
Q: are you saying pure SVG or combining it with hypertext?
A: the latter, so that users don't have to focus on reading
text.
I propose that we need greater coordination between W3C and OMA.
for work on mobile profiles, in particular, OMA BAC/MAE.
(XHTML, CSS, Multimodal)
Acknowledge that mobile is pushing the envelope of the Web
and isn't a second class citizen
Q: James: you seem to be saying that there is no one web
and that the mobile apps are orthogonal to the rest of the Web, no?
A: the Web isn't just about browsing
Q: Rotan: don't you think that there is a subset of Web content
that is valuable for mobile users?
A: yes
Q: improved bookmarking would be useful, right?
Q: Johan: what will drive this market are new services, not just
adapted old content. Applications need to be designed with
mobile users in mind. Our job is to help developers to do this.
A: agreed
Q: Rhys: we are very focused on new services rather than adapting
old ones. More on this later today.
Q: Antoine: it's not just about web pages, we also have screen
savers, ring tones and other kinds of functionality, e.g. making
the weather summary appear on the phones main display.
Q: content management industry separates presentation from the content.
this is very important to us.
Q: when I arrived at Barcelona airport I discovered the taxi strike
and would have liked to have been able to use my phone to get a warning
push to me and advice on what to do instead of taking a taxi.
Q: device independence needs to group devices into classes,
this relates to what we need to expose via style sheets
Q: I would like to be able to access business applications from
my phone that I normally access from the desktop
Q: Johan: most mobiles don't support HTTP and this effects the choices
we can make. We need to talk with the IETF about the protocols. The
latency is a major issue for mobile apps today.
Q: it would be nice to have improved content transfer protocols to
get apps to your phone.
Q: even on the desktop, browsing isn't the real driver
1. Mobile device and market perspective NBK: How many people have access to the devices and what fraction of them are using the services? NBK: Handset sales are booming and are out performing combined PC and Notebook sales sales by a huge margin of factor four, that even increases. Q: How often do people change their phones vs their desktop? NBK: Even if these are just the sales figures, and don't accurately reflect the installed base, steady growth in subscribers occurs and lead to about a billion handsets in 2004. We Need to also acknowledge that we have to adress mainstream devices, as not everyone will be able to afford high end devices, neither in industrial world even less in e.g. the developing world. Q: In China, people will first talk and later we expect growth in data services, we expect the same in India Q: Need to be careful in making historical comparisons, as new phones support downloadable browsers etc so you can upgrade their capabilities without being forced to buy a new device NBK: Yes, agreed, but the numbers are here for the general idea of the device reation between fixed user expereince and handset. Shows slide [#6] showing decline in WAP 1.x and strong growth of WAP 2.x. [to approx. 1.2 Billion devices] NBK: Need to acknowledge the large installed base in browsing capabilites in the supported mobile. To answer question on phone exchange rate: approx. 12 to 24 months, and rising plus phones are reuse - the base will not as quickly go away as one might think. 2. Mobile Internet user perspective NBK: Outside of browsing today, the dominant use is messaging. NBK: (Shows slide [#8] of current usage and data on what people say they are very interested in): After messaging tracking is the next highest. NBK (Shows slide [#9]): After messaging there is for quite a while nothing much, then information gathering/browsing; voting was also named as popular interest - is also frequently used in TV shows. NBK (Shows slide [#10]): Key limiting factors: user experience, security, content, network and device constraints. Good things include the role of the operator to mediate authentication, so that users don't have to remember and type zillions of passwords. Slow downloads and expense of unrequested data (unadapted large content in internet pages, spam messages transmission over air) can discourage repeat usage. NBK (Shows slide [#11] - with rising experince poor experience of mobile internet use puts people off even more. 3. T-Mobile International Operator Perspective NBK (slide #13 - Approaching usage patterns) From fixed via nomadic to mobile a different importance of Immediacy versus Breadth. Mobility and Immediacy are strong partners. Q (Johan Hjelm): We found the same result in 1998 with Japanese students. Q (Robert): for certain use cases this makes a lot of sense, e.g. music download to desktop and mobile, same immediacy in both situations. Q: When listening you might want to buy the current track. A (Robert): but that's not a mobility issue - its the same at home or on the move. NBK: As operators, we try to look at the mass market, which has an umet demand. Q: Tim (Orange): there is a continuum between breadth and immediacy (cites need for breadth for proving a point in a pub quiz game) NBK: We need to identify the key inhibitors and how to overcome them, explictly without any animosity on the technologes employed to achieve this. For instance to educate developers to enable them to provide an effective user experience on mobile devices. * Significant proportion of current and mid-term future installed base cannot be addressed via either browser only or server only adaptation approach. * Standards creation process has its only limits. Clarity between organizations and shared goals is needed to avoid leaving too much room for standards dialects. * Sharing best practices and key unmet requirements. * Building trust for the mobile user experience. Currently no generic way to discover end to end mobility compliance for customers is available * Practical issue: The device profiles need to be reliable. And we then need to educate would be developers to use them. It is essential for uptake that the user experience can be reliably predicted by the user!
WMI meeting, Day 1, Second session. Chaired by Rhys Lewis.
This will be a less quantitative presentation. I expect a more interactive discussion. Slide: I want to present the following use case: “flying to Barcelona”. I am at the airport and discover my flight is cancelled. There's a big queue at the check-in with people trying to rebook. However, in my case there's a button on my phone that brings me to a rebooking service. I choose the best alternative flight. I get a confirmation message. Non-mobile people are at a disadvantage. It must be pointed out that this is achievable with today's technology. Slide: "Anti-Use Case" A phone is a more personal device. A bad experience on the phone is more annoying to the user than bad experiences on other devices. My phone crashing is just unacceptable. SM (Stephane Maes, Oracle) Still you are emphasising the creation of content for specifically for mobile. As this is only for mobile, you will only have the mobile developers using this. This splits the web. DA Standardizing interaction guidelines would be good. Entry point to site would determine if you are fixed or mobile, and adapt accordingly. BM (Bennet Marks, Nokia) If the travel page fails, you just make a call to your travel agent. This is the path of least resistance. Users will do whatever is the most simple to do. I think middle case is more likely. Only when the automatic agent is better than human at the end of the phone will the agent be used. DA Motivation is to create an automated agent to reduce costs of the company providing service. Calling the human agent would still be one of the options. JH (Johan Hjelm, Ericsson) Travel agents are concerned that airlines would disintermediate them. There are plenty of guidelines on interaction already from human factors people, but these are not getting into our technologies yet. DA Perhaps it's a task for MWI to look at these human factors issues and experiences. SM I still want to emphasize that if you do this you still split the web. DA We would not be splitting the web if going to a URL from any device would get you the same information. But note that some URLs are transitory. Slide: How Mobile Operators can Help The Mobile Portal does not encourage users leaving the portal. But it provides many other services. The other end of the spectrum is where content providers see operators merely as a bit-pipe. The middle ground is most likely to succeed. Identity, location and charging could be operator services to content providers. We don't have a plan to expose adaptation as a service, but it could be a future enabler. SM Flip side: adding these services (id, payment...) is an advantage that is not available to the non-mobile space. This would again split the web. - voice from rear But in identity space there are several technologies, so these could be harmonized, so it could support mobile and fixed. So it would be good to have a body of members that don't differentiate fixed/mobile web to ensure these services have equivalents in all spaces. Slide: W3C-OMA Collaboration There are areas of overlap (eg SVG) where we can work together. Teppo Jansson (Nordea) About Mobile Profile: we know XHTML-mp is not used. Browser manufacturers have ignored it. Opera, NetFront etc totally support HTML. The Mobile Profile only widens the gap between mobile and fixed. DA Compound Documents work may help resolve these problems. BM Devices assume Mobile Profile as a base. They were the catalyst to bring things together. Supporting HTML and other things should be seen as a good thing. We should welcome these things. DA Last slide.
We will focus on browsing of the mobile web. Opera technology is the same on different platforms. (Shows screen with variety of BBC pages in different sizes.) This comes at a price: manipulation of content. - another voice from rear Is the browser or server doing this adaptation? TB The browser is doing the adaptation. This is challenging to the browser, but it can be done today. Slide: Desktop browsers vs mobile browsers More powerful things come over time, but also get more complex. Note: this is not a W3C/OMA technology comparison. One could shrink browser to run on mobile. Mozilla are trying to do this. A similar approach is used by Opera. Others do it the other way around, by building mobile browser and changing it to support fixed web content. We would prefer to see agreement in these spaces to bring about browsing convergence. Today we are just making users angry because they don't get what they want. Slide: What we need in browsing technologies NK (Normen Kowalewski, T-Mobile) Introducing things not in fixed web would be breaking the web? Why not modular evolution to share extension of capabilities? TB I'm not singling out any particular technology here. Just advising against creating extensions in mobile that diverge away from fixed. - voice from right Only 13% of web sites use CSS. DA One way of separating content and styling is to have separate store of device neutral content in, for example, newsml format. JH You're making things too simple if you think it's just a matter of reformatting for different device. You need to go deeper into the content to ensure it is appropriate to the device/user. TB We still have a problem with people not following the standards we have today. Even today only a small part of W3C members use valid markup on their homepages. AB (Art Barstow, Nokia) Historically work in W3C was monolithic. We would prefer to see more modular development. TB Similar experience in OMA. Slide: Mobile browsing technology use cases. Slide: Summary Which is more difficult: converge browsers or convert content to be mobile friendly? TB The latter will be more difficult. MO (Matti Oivio, Nordea) We would do adaptation of content if we *knew* how to do it. But today you have to publish the same page for all of these devices. - voice Must consider fragmentation of web. Should we have separate profile for TV? We should have a core set of capabilities for all. Look at CSS-MP: it contains properties specific to mobile space. This breaks the web and the future will have more separate markets. NK What about adaptation of web. Meet in the middle, as soon as possible. TB You want to be based on standards. You don't want to be doing too much "heavy lifting" to support this diversity. RH (Rotan Hanrahan, MobileAware) But note that solutions to adapt content already exist. MobileAware, Volantis and a few others can do this today. We want to avoid making this process too complex in the future. JH And some are doing by fudging and using tricks in the background that produce something that works. We need to expose the details and let it been seen how it is done. TB Yes, get rid of black boxes. SB (Stephane Boyera, W3C) Is it "we don't know how because we don't have technology"? Or is it that we have too many ways to do this? TB It's both. TY (Toshihiko Yamakami, Access) Explain your position regarding the danger of subset/superset. TB I will take this up afterwards.
Slide: Variations in Support for Standards Slide: Problems with tables. Could use lowest common denominator (one column) but this would be going too far. Slide: CSS Media With support for @media you can get something better. Slide: Deployment Considerations W3C usually develops things in a modular way. SM Are you thinking of web developers or browser creators. DR The web developer. - voice Are you advocating a Mobile Friendly brand? DR Make it machine readable, so search engines can find it. Then brand it to encourage customers. JS (Jim Smith, T-Mobile) There is an issue with "One URL" where intermediate caches can cache the wrong (adapted) content and deliver it to subsequent devices when requested. Talk: More Compelling Applications (Dave Raggett) Should not consider browser as a "browser". Bad name. It's a window into your applications. Slide: Summary - voice What do you think about issues of making it easy to create content? Would ease of creation increase adoption? DR Yes indeed. JH Better on mobile would drive usage. Skinning of MMI interfaces: you are extending device description by some magnitude, because now you have to describe what the user has done to his mobile. SB Do you think it can work without having to brand content for phones? Mobile ready handset will enable appropriate content selection. DR Devices have to be consistent enough to give meaning to "mobile ready". Mobile Ready today means one thing. Might be different tomorrow. We need to be careful how this certification process is run. DR Yes, commitment must be made. If ready today, then committing to be ready tomorrow. DT (Daniel Tagg, Culture Online) Issue of separate interfaces for different user requirements, such as making sites and content accessible to those with disabilities. RL (Rhys Lewis, Volantis) This is an issue that has been considered within the DI group.
Note: use cases did not mention downloading. May be because we asked for Mobile *web* access. Slide: Compelling experience Example: Necessity: train times Example: Entertainment: ringtones (brand alignment) Word: now, fun, useful, sexy, cheap, easy to use... Emotions: influence behaviour. Bridges gap to action. Slide:Trust, value & emotion Trust could be associated with a brand. RH Attachment creates references, evangelism If someone feels good about something, they tell others. NK And bad experiences also cause worse effects. People tell others how bad their experience was. - voice In your hand you hold 3 brands, for example: Nokia, Vodafone, BBC. Potentially conflicting brand values are coming to the user. RP Which means you need to understand also the device personality, not just the (content) brand. - voice If a mobile online payment and goes wrong, you go to the credit card company, not to the mobile operator. SM You go to whoever you are paying for the service when something goes wrong. RP Why do people not come back? NK You need to win them back. More disappointments reinforce reasons for not returning. RH Could a community of authors like the traditional web be possible? Traditional web authoring was easy. The users were able to speak as well as listening. Today it seems hard for people to “speak” in the mobile web. Johan Mobile blogs could be the authoring solution. BM Yes, we are now seeing blurring of fixed and mobile blogs. - - session ends - -
-Understanding devices Hardware, standards supported, browser behaviour, etc. We don't have an homogeneity in the mobile world, and this is a good thing -Requirements: - Profiling architecture - Challenges : manufacturers :is UAProf working ? Do they really know their device ? Do other parties trust the data ? content providers : the right part of the value chain (they know what they need to know, but they are not aware of what is coming next) Operators : already defines devices (brand), need profiles for infrastructure Too many devices in the world : user custom, localization, network operator custom Confidence-based profiles (e.g. it looks like this kind of device in this kind of region, then it could have the same capabilities as this kind of device) Recognize device : multi-user agent mangling: difficult to anticipate what is going to be processed. What about push services ? MobileAware : push scenario Send an early message before to ask to the device:what are you ? Orange : content adaptation for P2P MMS : too much content adaptation is required. Define some classes to ensure maximal interoperability MobileAware: we cannot freeze the evolution of the device. We need differentiation
- Problem statement Lot of actors can modify the device (operator, user, etc.) Standard activities to express the characteristics of the devices But incorrect, incomplete or unreachable Not limited only a problem for adaptation also for the support to end-users (support people sometimes don't know the device of the user !) - Proposal collaboration W3C/OMA to setup a repository to store the devices characteristics The problem is not limited to mobile devices W3C & OMA should host this repository -Design Hierarchical structure Different level of access depending on the user of the repository Information related to the user and authorized might be also accessible (with control) Some levels needs authorization/restriction Some companies could be able to host some proprietary nodes Data entry is performed by authorized administrators Similar to DNS and UDDI - Logistics W3C should be the top roots because it's not only for mobile, but OMA should be the top root regarding mobile Ericsson : Relationship with device manufacturers ? Oracle: there is a distributed architecture that could be populated one level could be populated by device manuf. Second level by operator Some device could be populated by OMA ? ?? : what about long term scalability of such a structure ? We need some dynamic interrogation mechanism Oracle: information provided by the manuf. should not change often, information from operator shouldn't change a lot For user we need some dynamic access. But it's similar to UDDI or DNS. Unfortunately, most of the time, we can't get the information dynamically
- Big issue : what are the more relevant capabilities, who decides what is essential ? Impossible Objective and subjective material. Objective material comes from the manufacturer. - Device profiling Manual activity Minimum : assign device to a class Complex new devices can take hours to profile - Capture request to discover identifying signature No trustable. - Basic content and interaction and tests Bugs, etc. - Device evolution New generation inherit most features but No single hierarchy is perfect However we need a hierarchy of "administrator" ? - Access to device information XPATH, APIs, JavaScript, Server Side (but how to get all the informations?). Once again, we need strong collaboration between OMA & W3c - Reliability Who validates ? How to manage corrections ? Ericsson : in 1998 we found an appropriate solution (UAProf). Now the problem is bigger Oracle : dynamic information should not necessarily be accessible in the same way. Among the problem we have, the device information is the most urgent problem Stephane Boyera W3C : some mobile phones have multiple display modes. Then a static repository is not enough Vodafone: Temperature, weather, location is not feasible. We have to reduce latency. Even if context and device sound similar, we have to consider it differently. Nokia : we have an economic problem : information is power and represents money. ArgoGroup : WURFL seems to work ? Then it should be easier for standard bodies Oracle : Thanks to a standardization, at a certain point, it'll be less expensive to participate to the common initiative than to keep information Nordea : UAProf provides a lot of useless information. We don't care about CPU etc. Vodafone (& most people) :agreed Oracle : we have to be realistic. If we don't know about the device today, we can't deliver anything to the device
Robin Berjon : xml binary wg chair : you mentioned wbxml. any plan for a cooperation on binary xml ? AA: we would love too. we would love to have a look at it. we want to share experiences RB: decision in march, time appropriate for discussion Rotan Hanrahan: proposition of having neutral repository of device info : what do you feel ? position ? AA : piece of work in the uaprof group. we recognize this problem. one of our work items is to work on registration process for schema updates and core vocabularies. building automatic tools to help that. we think about being a repository, for mobile or wider audience RH: you would need to validate the info provided by neutral parties. AA: concept of repository is ok. independent validation is something else, harder. but yes point taken
Stephane Boyera: mobile ok related to content or the process behind the URI to generate adapted content ? AB: yes in the content. validation service like css validator or xhtml validator Philipp Hoschka : mobile ok to content ? content could be valid but may not work on the software /phone? how to test that ? AB: couple of things to be done. one option : links to simulators from the validator services - terminal manufacturers simulators, ... Bennett Marks : we assume that w3c would come to syntactical shape of the markup for mobile ok. 1st step. easy level. much more difficult : measure the semantic quality. PH: well could be in the software on the phone. thus testing phone would be good AB: don't think w3c should jump on testing browser Rotan: the process could be accessible not a specific content which is adapted. more complicated than just checking content. AB: agreed Dave Raggett: don't you think that there should be certification from end to end of the delivery chain ? AB: 2 things here : device certification : better organizations for doing that than w3c. what i think is the need is more test suites. Johan Hjelm: great if it is cost nothing more than validation of content. it would be great. there are some many problem educating content writers. cool if it is as simple as running a validator. good to have a way to use search engine to get mobile ok sites. Teppo Jansson: the phone should be certified, not the content only. Doug Dominiak: you can take xhtml-wp and css-wp and write useless content with a bad user experience. raise awareness what mobile contents. Chris Yanda : good to have a breakout session on best practices
Johan Hjelm : where do you see opportunities to cooperate with oma ? RL: lots of area , particularly in device information branch of our work. resource question at this point ??? from Philips: representative for the oma group working on a standard media transcoding interface. it is just content transcoding. main customers is mms world. would be happy to cooperate with you on that. RL: sure having standard in this space would help Doug Dominiak: good idea to adapt on device due to limited bandwidth ? RL: vision in diwg : adaptation at the appropriate place along the delivery path : network bandwidth is one factor to decide where to make the adaptation. Carl Taylor: many years ago, printing problem : not print as you would expect. similarities with user experience. how can we guarantee that ? RL: tough area. every content creation company does different things : validation, simulators in diwg, we are talking about the representation of the content which would be adaptable. CT: my point is the feedback loop to improve the user experience
(This is a summary of the session, as presented by Rhys Lewis. A transcription of the flip-chart is attached at the end.) We went down the "technology route" in our breakout session. We discussed the need for core set of correct core set of attributes, emphasizing “correct”. Lots of people have views on what data should be stored in these repositories. Different node owners would be responsible for the quality of data stored in each node. The DNS is a good model of a federated database for managing the repository. As an example, the data could include information on device bugs. The W3C could be the root of this database and the OMA would own the mobile subset. Private/local data could be stored in protected ways so that valuable extra information could be offered by vendors. This could be stored locally, or encrypted on a public server. There were other questions to be resolved, including: Security: how do you trust the data you are getting from the repository? Validation: do you do it on input to repository, or on output? Overrides: people may wish to offer better or alternative data. We got into a debate on dynamic properties. This would be device information that might change during a session. Do we transmit state updates to the server, or wait for it to be requested? Bandwidth was a concern here. We left this for future debate. - - end of summary - - Issues and ideas raised during the breakout were captured on a flip-chart. These are the items recorded, in the order they originally occurred: Need core set. Need correct set. Extended/able. - Can have private/local. - bunch of files? (on HTTP) - would this be enough? Who writes it? How do you access it? DNS analogy is good. Bug info could be useful. (MMS) ================================== Where would the server(s) be? - W3C? - OMA? Who is responsible for inserting (part of) the data? Do we store protected versions? - No - Keep public only - Custom stuff on *own* server Security: - ID of server/node gives trustworthiness. Where do we record bugs? ================================== Should we record results of validation? If so, where? Consider CC/PP mechanism for overriding --> (Useful in hierarchy of responsibility) (Note: also validate syntax.) How do we handle dynamic data (e.g. device state)?
- Toshihiko Yamakami: W3C should not do full spec, then "basic" version afterwards. Instead, start with "mobile core" - ??: W3C should think of mobile as first class citizen - Peter Stark: one way to resolve this is for OMA should do requirements instead of specs, transfer them to W3C - ??: important to clarify where companies should send their people - ??: cooperation concerns mostly MAE group - Philipp: we had request by OMA for W3C team to present on CDF plans - declared our willingness to do that, but seems to have never happened - not sure why - Toshihiko Yamakami: ok to do requirements in BAC, but W3C needs to care about them. Many people in BAE are from W3C members, they would be happy to accept a W3C-produced mobile profile - Antoine Quint: we should liaise when doing use cases - ??: OMA has to be involved on use cases and requirements - ??: have joint f2f meetings - ??: need to have a person in charge of the liaison - Philipp Hoschka: use the liaison agreement - make serious use of observer mechanism - Alastair: have cross membership - Etienne: OMA should do one standard, not a new standard every six months - we need stability for two years - Toshihiko Yamakami: two years too slow - ??: need quick success story on liaison - ??: CDF is a candidate - Takanari Hayama: may be too late for CDF - Philipp Hoschka: would encourage doing this for Multimodal - use observer mechanism - Toshihiko Yamakami: use 2005 to make this work - ??: solution could be for W3C to produce scalable architecture - Doug Dominiak: doing scalable architecture is hard
Best Practices break out group -- chair Johan
What is the relationship with "Mobile OK!" ?
- Guidelines are important.
Emulators should be a reliable indication of the user
experience on the phone.
Johan: emulators can't provide the tactile experience of
real phones.
What is the relationship between emulators and "Mobile OK!"?
We need a means to check that the emulators are correct.
Bennett: there needs to be an objective measure behind
adherence to "Mobile OK!", this might also be accompanied
with subjective measures.
There are some issues:
- You need automatic tools to validate content
- There needs to be independent checks against the
possibility of people abusing the trust mark
- there needs to be a means to stop such abuses
If you do have some subjective measures, this should be
monitored by a community of users (peer ranking).
Will Mobile OK content work on all devices?
Probably only on devices shown to support the associated
specifications.
Bennett: the Mobile OK idea was created by Tim Berners-Lee
some months back. It meant that the content adheres to the
associated specifications.
Let's keep the scope down to a small set of specs.
Agreement that the community looks after the adherence of
claims to the Mobile OK trust mark.
If the community thinks a site isn't conforming to the trust
mark, then there should be a means to prevent its abuse, i.e.
sanctions to stop its use.
Mobile OK! has two aspects:
1) technology e.g. design guidelines and validation
2) brand understood and trusted by end-users
Any kind of community judgement should be out of scope for W3C.
Johan: how do we capture best practices? How to we collect input
from the community?
Companies like Volantis and MobileAware have a lot of experience
that would be valuable to tap as input for a best practices
discussion.
We shouldn't steal their business from under their feet.
There would still be plenty of scope for their skills with a
Mobile OK brand, e.g. helping companies to design services
that match the brand.
Another idea is a galley of good sites, ranked by voting from
the community.
This is a bit like the work on the Virtual Library initiative
that was separated from the W3C very early on.
If we rely in a third party for conformance testing, the costs
will spiral out of control. The model has to be self sustaining.
There is a useful analogue in the accessibility world that we
could leverage. There are legislative penalties that apply.
What do we think about CSS Media Queries? This looks like a
valuable approach.
There are a lot of second level issues that can be objectively
measured.
if there are rival approaches how do we say which is better?
Answer: community feedback and market forces.
Johan wraps up.
If we picked from the currently available standards the ones
we feel are important, what process do we follow.
Poll on which standards are considered to be important
(we run out of time)
A gap analysis would be nice!
Chair: Evan Smouse [ES] This morning we'll have 3 sessions.
Good morning everyone. I'm Robin Berjon I'm going to present expway's position on the MWI. Not everything that was in the paper is in the talk but ask questions. Slide 1. Mobile web -- there is no such thing. But believing in fictitious things (like Dragons) can be useful. Can make you think about things in a way that can be practical. What does exist: Mobile devices for the web, mobile usage of the web. Content that is targeted for mobile web will not split the web (any more than content written in French). Slide 2. Stressing the advantages of mobile devices -- sexier, fast innovation, sustainable killer app (voice data), TV in your pocket Slide 3. Idle surfing is of little interest: E.g. having to scroll down ad nauseum to get to the content you want. Some types of content are more suited for mobile such as animations, video, services that can be decomposed into discrete transactions, audio. Slide 4. User visible formats: CDF working group is a plan to integrate document formats (starting with xhtml and svg). Dumbing down technologies for mobile isn't way to go. Future languages should start with a core and then build on top of that. XHTML 2.0 -- is it too late? XForms -- XForms basic "is a joke" (too big for mobile devices). An Xforms tiny would be better (slimmer). Slide 5. Street HTML -- HTML as it is practiced today. The pub argument use case: you use google to settle an argument. Argues that this use case isn't compelling. QUESTION (Chris Yanda, BBC): articulating case (BBC news article) where you do want 30 pages of text because users viewing a news article sometimes want to jump down to the bottom of the article -- they don't want the article spread across multiple pages. Could be a boundary case. We need target content for mobiles which is more than street html on its own can do. Slide 6: Quote from Schopenhauer "The art of controversy" -- arguing that evolution vs. revolution moniker can be meaningless. The web is a platform (big mix of technologies), not a territory. Slide 7: Arguing for use of binary xml format -- "bigger, longer, faster, harder." Slide 8: Searching use case -- argument for need for metadata -- google is OK for text based content [but as soon as you get away from this, it becomes less possible to use textual analysis -- you need deterministic metadata]. There are existing Metadata standards (e.g. tv-anytime). QUESTION: What about DVB. QUESTION: There is a group in OMA that's looking at this as well.
Slides on Adobe product suite (Adobe Creative Suite). Adobe wants to address problem of lack of tools. Slide 4: problem of "how do I author svg-t content -- how do I enable interactivity within 3gpp. Slide 5: Adobe / Zoomon partnership. [BS]: Zoomon committed to open standards product, in particular SVG -- we have products for mobiles. QUESTION: SVG-T with no proprietary options? [GA] Yes, -- SVG-T 1.1t. [BS] We're members of OMA, JCP, 3GPP -- we are focused on standards. Zoomon svgt browser is integrated into a number of phones. 20 million Zoomon svg-t enabled phones. QUESTION: Integrated into browser? [BS] Some are integrated into browser but implementations are all a bit different. Slide 6: [GA] Presenting [BS] About to release mobile animation module -- designed to work with Adobe CS products. Also emulate categories of devices. QUESTION: (Rotan) Can the parameters of the device be used to adapt content on the device? I could create SVG optimized for a particular site and then select the version or alternatively put logic on server. Do Zoomon have an API to make it easy to link in to a server solution. [BS] Not today. [Discussion over capabilities of SVG to adapt to different screen size -- Rotan wants to be able to make some of those decisions on the server prior to delivering the SVG.] Slide 7: Ethnography is important concept. Snapshot is Gen-X / Gen-Y / "Gen-Z" [ what happens after Gen Z? -DKA ] Slide 8: Market needs: Today in design schools around the world, people are practicing XHTML / CSS separation of content and structure. W3C's web site is not friendly to creative professionals. We need to share this information with the publishing community. This could be by involving the publishing community. "roundtripping" code through IDE's. Support for CDF. Slide 9: Calling for evolution of existing standards and techniques. (1+ Million developers throughout the day). Call for testing, certification, testing, guidelines. OMA and W3C need to be involved in these arenas. Both need to be there in deciding how these work. QUESTION: (Rotan) One of the approaches W3C has used to get their specs used is to create reference implementations such as Amaya. In the case of SVG-T, what's your outreach to get people (in terms of authoring). If you created a miniature free tiny authoring tool that could help to create the market. [BS] There are some free implementations. QUESTION: (Philippe Lucas) I don't think that W3C should do certification. Who should run the certification? [BS] We believe W3C and OMA must be involved but no position on who does the certification. QUESTION: (Doug D.) [Raising issue of many platforms raising complexity.] QUESTION: What about dynamic content -- how can you create this easily? Slide 11: There should be One Web. A lot of content exists in content management or DAM solutions so it is already independent of style. Users know where to find what they're looking for on the Net. (e.g. I know I want news I want to go to BBC.) Slide 12: [BS] Mobile OK is an interesting idea. [GA] Happy to demo what we have today. QUESTION: (Culture Online) Any external validation for SVG-T 1.1? [GA] Yes. QUESTION: (DKA) Metadata? [GA] Every Adobe application has ability to add XMP content (which is a metadata format). Take a look at adobe.com/XMP.
[EM] Noting that many points made here have been made already. Is this "all great minds think alike" or are we missing something? Slide 3: One Web is the ultimate target. -- author once publish many. But where we are today is that it rarely works. Industry consensus is needed to overcome these issues. Slide 5: User expectations: Right content now, people are paying, focused customer relationships (operators get blamed for everything). Usage factors: device form factor and ergonomic limitations, asynch interaction. Slide 7: Device diversity / mobile browser diversity causing problems. CC/PP and UAProf were meant to standardize device descriptions yet device profiles are hard to find, invalid and/or inaccurate. What can be done on this? Proposals have come out of this workshop. Slide 9: Requirements for content adaptation: get accurate and reliable information about delivery context. Slide 11: device / user profiles needed. Slide 13: Identification of gaps necessary; consideration of a "mobile web trust mark." -- Developed this idea independent of MobileOK thinking. QUESTION: (Rotan) Interoperability of content adaptation: it is mobileaware's intention to create convergence (interoperability) in this space. QUESTION: As a major player in OMA, how do you see the relationship going? Don't want to prejudge this but now that we recognize each others' existence, it would benefit to go further with cooperation. [Philippe Lucas] -- we need to have good cooperation between organizations and not have overlapping work. Ensure that when we identifying the gaps that the work is done in one place. We don't have shares in W3C or OMA we just want to make sure work is done in one place.
3UK: human readable - different from a search engine
???: mobile phone not ideal for web interaction ? what do you mean? RH: i mean web browsing like on desktop doug dominiak : focus on personalization and user centric. why existing tech not allowing that ? where are gaps ? RH: want to describe what i'm doing and then I want to get a personalized services gathering multiple services Rotan Hanrahan: your "place" technology sounds like agent technologies few years old. did you look at it ? RH: we looked at agents already. but the place itself is empty when it starts. thus slightly different and simply. you do not need agent technology. RHa: an agent can be active when you are not present, that could be a key point. RH: indeed , i didn't mention that but you want to have a set of intelligent agents working in background for you
no questions
PH:How to get the MWI started. Give us feedback, then we'll get suggestions JH:One thing missing from presentation was how OMA relationship would work. Like to see more cooperation PH:What areas? JH:Mobile web framework is an obvious area as the OMA already has such a thing (WAP2) Not involving that would be bad. Device description also an area where there are activities. Test suites etc is also an area where OMA has more expertise and should be leveraged. Also OMA should be represented in new W3C recommendations. Particularly for requirements. Actually all the areas could involve cooperation. All this work has to be done in cooperation with OMA. AB:I agree with Johan. Could we identify those areas from your list where cooperations could be possible SM:I agree that all that we are doing should be in cooperation (nordea)Also chance to offload some work from OMA into W3C. Also would like to see 3rd party outside OMA to look at this stuff. JH:We need to decide which bits belong in which organization Paula:Before we can do that we need to define what the tasks are to enable the mobile web. A little more work should be done to expand on this before we can decide what work goes where. The OMA costs are significant, so the companies in there need to be able to decide the most cost effective way to get things done. RH:I'm concerned about the 36 months time line. I think we need to prioritize so we can get something out within 6 months PH:Actually the intent is to deliver some things earlier, including the support infrastructure and the outreach etc. SM:Sorry I missed the morning, but was there an item on the device information repository. It should be separate from fixing CC/PP etc. Should be an explicit bullet. PH: "device information" covers this SM: not enough PH: ok, will add this to the list of items to prioritize (adds "Device Information Database") JH:Need to understand how it would work before committing resources. We have a means of prioritizing items. Where W3C is already working on something, a component directed towards the mobile community can be added very easily. Education can be done now and the relationship with OMA has been discussed. this would be a good starting point (education) then we can discuss the other items. I fail to see why there is a hurry all of a sudden. DA:I think the reason that we are here shows perhaps an increasing sense of urgency. Also we have a lot of consensus around the problems. We do need to understand the split between OMA and W3C for specific issues. And it might need a different implementation of the process in each case. JH:Agree that it is different in each case. There are things that we can start now without discussion. PH:Example? JH:SVG Tiny authoring guidelines, examples, best practices. Maybe a best practices interest group. SB:I think we all agree that cooperation is needed. We need to have something on the table. From a proposal, then we can work out the relationship. W3C is proposing things right now, but it does not exclude cooperation. NK::Most people have expressed the need for cooperation. I think that there needs to be an assigned responsibility for tasks. Joint groups and joint recommendations would be great. Joint work, but some work 'owned' by OMA and some in W3C. Need to have a stakeholder-driven approach. PH:We have people in both organizations. I'm responsible for W3C. For joint work, going through two processes is an overhead. Also the IPR rules are different in each organization. NK::Does this change with the change of OMA IPR? PH:Not enough to make a difference SM:Maybe we could have the idea of one organization passing the batten from one organization to the other. This could be a first way to move to joint specifications. Agree on the work process first and on the timeline. EdM:We have not seen a sense of leadership about these issues SM:We should do it around specific tasks and ask the questions in that context. JH:I support what Stephane is saying. Also we have the result of joint work between OMA and W3C and it is the device descriptions. Isn't this a good trial case for such a joint piece of work. W3C does the framework and the OMA the vocabulary. RB:I like the idea of joint work. We should not be too scared by the IPR and joint management issues. If you decide that a joint group is 'owned' by one of the organizations, and you agree to abide by the appropriate IPR policy if you join the group. Paula:Restates that we must understand the tasks before we address the process JH:I agree, but also, I'm not sure that the list is complete. I'd like to take some time to ensure that the list is complete. On the joint IPR, there have been examples of W3C and IETF cooperating and they had different IPR rules PH: Cooperation with IETF predates W3C patent policy - IPR issue with OMA is hard, and it is why the W3C/OMA liaison agreement took 9 months. RB:Its only hard if you have general rules. PH:Actually it is because of the contract you sign when you join OMA SM:We need to look at the list and think about it and make sure its complete. Not sure we have the list. We should agree on how to build the list for priorization. JH:Lets set up a mailing list and determine a date by which the list of items must be complete. AB:I agree with a mailing list but I'm not sure that we'll end up with a proper list. Could we identify some owners for the items and have people post their thoughts to the list. NK::Yesterday, I tried to propose how to get a starting point. Just prioritizing these particular items might not be successful. How about collecting the most important items for each of the bullet points. We could collect that and then reflect it back to the group. We should do that quickly. Paula:WE should not have wine over lunch! We are mixing up, what we do, how we do it, who will do it and when we need to have done it. We need the description, priorization, applicable standards etc. We also need knowledge of current work and the gap and that could lead us to the skills needed and then assign to OMA or W3C based on that. We could also then have a champion in each organization. NormenK::I think its good to do that. We could probably do some decisions on who will take the items through the first step. Then once we have the additional information, we could make a better choice of who will then continue with the work. PH:OK, so people would like a more detailed description and the chance to debate these items more via a mailing list. Just putting on a list may be a bit random. So I may try and talk to you directly. We do need to flesh this out more. That would be my conclusion. There was some discussion about conformance testing. Could we get some feedback on that. JH:Conformance testing is a difficult area. A true certification test requires taking responsibility for the correctness of the tests. Self certification is significantly more cost efficient and gives equally good results. I would recommend W3C not becoming a test house. More interoperability testing approach could be better. SM:Even interoperability testing is a major cost. For OMA, this is a major cost. PH:We do interop testing in W3C processes during recommendation creation, but we don't maintain tests afterwards. People have been asking us to produce more comprehensive test suites. AB:Quick follow up. One of the immediate things that could be done would be to have the W3C QA and OMA test folks talking about what exists and what could be shared. AB:One of the things I notice from the list is that some are extensions of work that is already going on in W3C. DI in particular should look at how it could absorb some of these things. If we can get these done within the existing infrastructure. ES:Ad some point we have to decide whether or not we go beyond the work of the current groups. AB:Absolutely. Some of these things are out of DI scope and I wouldn't ask you to take those on. DD:Is making the mobile web work a priority for W3C? PH:We are already focusing quite a bit on the mobile web. CDF and SMIL as well as DI are in the space. We could probably do better. From a management side, we are excited about mobile. Paula:If the DI group ok with doing more work, is it a question of more requirements. PH:We are short of manpower in the group so we need to consider adding more people. RH:Maybe we should have an MWI group to hold the work. JH:Looks like DI has a manpower shortage. Perhaps some things could be brought out of the group. RH:We looked at this but at the moment, we would lose people if we lost tasks. RL:We are overloaded and there are possible ways of splitting the work we have. RH:In mobile OK, the markup might be the result of a process, such as adaptation. Needs to consider how mobile OK relates to the variety of devices that are supported. Should follow the WAI model of A AA AAA support. PH:Yes, and the WAI certification is the model for this certification. RH:When there is a process, you need to specify a workable test. Carl3:Is it the end-to-end process, the browser, the content etc. that has the mobileOK NK::Valuable to have automated tools as far as possible. If there is additional certification on top of that that is good, but we need this automatic mechanism. Even if it only tests that the first page of a URL is delivered, that would be a great step forward. RH:Maybe W3C should define a few virtual UA strings and use those to drive a process. JH:Even simpler, we should have more basic tests of well formedness, and validity. We have to be careful about device classes. New devices cannot be locked out. RH:If the device doesn't support well formedness, then you can't have well formedness as a validity test. SM:We may be going too deep. I'm not sure that device classes are easy to do yet. JP:I've done this for a long time and however difficult you think it is, its more difficult. Carl3:There are other considerations for content, where it is a health warning or legal notice and we might not be able to achieve correctness check just automatically. PH:We see this in WAI SM:The DI guys know about this. Its more than just correctness. It's also a question of whether the page looks good etc. (Nordea bank)Get back to basics. If nothing happens when you follow the link, its not mobileok. If it displays the site, its ok, if it doesn't its not. SM:It shows we have to discuss it. DA:We do need to fix the basics. There are lots of complex things around multimodal etc., but its the 'hello world' use case that we need to fix. JH:We have to consider that lots of the problems can't be solved by standardization. Lot's of the problems come from deployments, internal problems, agreements between parties and not things that can be fixed in the standards. Best practices group could identify what approaches actually work in delivering sites that are mobileok, that could be very valuable. Jim??:Who is the target audience? Who is it that we want to trust us better? We need to understand this. Carl3:Plea to make the best practices as light as possible. RH:Comments about getting back to basics. DI has concept of functional user experience. This is probably the testing level we should start with. JP:Not much of a pull. NK::Should be a small set of things that is the standard. mobileok is for the people who do the content. There may not be enough screen real estate for any mobile ok logo DR:What about peer review? Could use the community to review and voting for defining what is good on mobiles Chris Y:I'm in favour of that. Might help to open this up. A sort of hot 100. This would open things up more to the wider web than just the operator portal community. SM:So are we just rewarding people who take the trouble to build mobile applications. But what about bringing more of the other stuff to the mobile world and have no incentive. Are we to ignore them? DA:There is an implicit line of reasoning that if things are available, there will be an incentive RH:The existence of the mark will incent tools vendors etc to create appropriate content. JP:Operators are already doing certification. Would VF drop that? DA:Our view is that there is a spectrum. We see a role for the mobile portal, where we do certification, and a different role for mobileok. I'd like to see the scope for convergence of those two certifications. JH:Maybe it is the tools that should be mobileok. Maybe this could extend to good ways of doing other services like location. NK:: Should have tools included in mobileok. Should be a minimum set to ensure we can get agreement. If such a mark exists, we may be able to release resources to help with the standards generation. I'd like to scale down on testing and rely on standards more. SM:To make it happen, can't assume that mobileok is enough of an incentive. We need to think about the other incentives. Chris Y:Idea of meeting a set standard and tests is good, but the brand isn't going on our pages, and I suspect that this true for many large content providers. RH:You can use other things like robots.txt which can enable people to know that the site is mobileok even without logs. TY:Two suggestions. Very simple scenarios. W3C and OMA take roles. OMA requirements, and W3C does spec. If there is disagreement need to have processes to ensure that failures don't occur. Funding - Look at work to remove overlap and then new work to create new value. Need to separate the two areas DA:I agree that the new work should be the focus. AB:I want to agree with Jan. We need to strengthen the cooperation. BM: Yes, and multimodal and compound documents are not overlapping at the moment, but are going on in both organizations. We need to do this now. Should just be trivial communication and guidance. PH:We should be doing this anyway. SM:This is important to do. Also web services should be there too. BM:Everyone has said that coordination is valuable. PH:Agreed, but my point was just that we should do this even if we don't have an MWI AB:Getting an initial success would be good. PH:Ok, we should conclude now. To summarize, we see that people need more detail on what these bullets need. We also need a mailing list. There is definite interest in particular topics. DA:Carl's point was that we should call for individuals to contribute to these individual items. SM:Maybe we should agree to have another meeting to focus our attention. NK:: 1) Mailing list but in a way that we can see how contributions map to the bullet lists. 2) Have a deadline for giving feedback to the next iteration of the agenda including potential strawman charters and have the debate over a subsequent personal meeting. Paula:Collecting the information has to have been done before the next meeting. My summary is that we have not reached any conclusion about having a MWI. We know that there are tasks and that we need coordination. We need more facts and have them organized. We need that before we can proceed. PH:This is a very high priority item for W3C. Paula: We could be proactive for another meeting and then cancel it if we have not made progress. How about the OMA meeting on January 19th in Frankfurt. PH: may need phone conferences earlier