Mobile Web Best Practice (MWBP) Working Group Charter

The Mobile Web Best Practices worked under this charter until October 2007; it has been rechartered at that date, and this charter is kept mostly for historical reasons.

This charter is written in accordance with section 6.2.6 of the W3C Process Document.


Table of Contents

  1. Mission Statement
  2. Scope and Deliverables
  3. Duration
  4. Success Criteria
  5. Milestones
  6. Confidentiality
  7. Patent Disclosures
  8. Dependencies/Relationship With Other W3C Activities
  9. Coordination With External Groups
  10. Communication Mechanisms
  11. Voting Mechanisms
  12. Participation
  13. How to Join the Working Group

1. Mission Statement

The mission of the Mobile Web Best Practice (MWBP) Working Group is to develop a set of technical best practices and associated materials in support of development of web sites that provide an appropriate user experience on mobile devices.

2. Scope and Deliverables

The main objective of the Mobile Web Best Practice (MWBP) Working Group is to enable the reach of the Web to be easily extended onto mobile devices by providing guidelines, checklists and best practice statements which are easy to comprehend and implement. These, when implemented by a Web site provider will enable the content to be perceived by users on mobile devices, particularly small-screen devices such as PDAs, smart phones and touch-screen devices.

The intent of the MWBP Working Group is not to force content providers to limit the scope of their content delivery only those mechanisms which are available on mobile devices. Rather, the guidelines produced by the MWBP Working Group are intended to enable content to be seamlessly adapted across a range of device form factors.

There is no intent for the MWBP Working Group to develop new technology, such as markup languages. However if, during its work, the need for new technologies is identified, the group may raise requirements with other W3C groups or groups within other standards organisations.

The scope of the MWBP Working Group includes the following specific items:

A trustmark, for the purposes of this document, is defined as a mark or badge that indicates adherence to a set of criteria. Relevant examples of trustmarks include the Conformance Logos promoted by the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative and the TRUSTe seal developed and promoted by TRUSTe. In both of these examples, a visible mark is used to indicate adherence to a set of best practice criteria in a particular domain.

The mobileOK trustmark for Web sites may function similarly, although it may also be possible for a web site to use the trustmark without placing a human-visible indication on their page. That is, the mobileOK trustmark for Web sites may be developed to be both human and machine-visible, and the human visible version will be optional (note that "mobileOK" is only a working name at this point, and that the final name will be determined by the Working Group).

The mobileOK trustmark is intended to be a ""technical trustmark" as opposed to a "consumer" trustmark. That is, it is not currently intended to be perceived or understood by the general public. Rather, the presence of this trustmark may underpin other, more visible content discovery and labelling mechanisms. For example, a search engine or other content discovery mechanism could display results differently or give preferential treatment to results that carry the mobileOK trustmark.

The mobileOK trustmark for Web sites may be used in test tools that would be applied to mobile web content to check adherence to guidelines. The mobileOK trustmark for Web sites may also be used for authoring tools which produce content that adheres to the guidelines developed in the MWBP Working Group.

Deliverables of the Working Group will include

Quality Commitments

In its operations, specifications, and test materials the MWBP Working Group will comply with the relevant guidelines of the W3C Quality Assurance Working Group (QAWG).

3. Duration

This Working Group is scheduled to last until 31 December 2006.

4. Success Criteria

5. Milestones

For the first year only:*

* This schedule is meant to be indicative, assuming the Working Group decides that the best practices statements logically fall into two major sets of deliverables.

6. Confidentiality

W3C, and all W3C Working Groups, are accountable to the Web community as a whole for the quality of W3C technical work. In support of this public accountability, and to ease cooperation with external bodies, the Working Group makes early working drafts of its documents publicly available.

Feedback and discussion on early drafts will be encouraged on the group's public mailing list (see communications). This charter is also public.

Other email discussions, such as those concerning administrative arrangements, discussions prior to releasing early drafts and reviews of documents from other groups, are accessible to W3C Members only.

All documentation, test suites, and validating tools produced by this Working Group will be publicly accessible.

7. Patent Disclosures

This Working Group operates under the W3C Patent Policy (5 February 2004 Version).

To promote the widest adoption of Web standards, W3C seeks to issue Recommendations that can be implemented, according to this policy, on a Royalty-Free basis. Consequently, this Working Group will operate on a Royalty-Free basis.

8. Dependencies/Relationship With Other W3C Activities

The MWBP Working Group expects to maintain contacts with the following groups within W3C:

Mobile Web Initiative

The MWBP Working Group exists within the framework of the Mobile Web Initiative. The MWBP Working Group chair will sit on the MWI steering committee.

Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)

The MWBP Working Group expects to work directly with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Working Group to develop guidelines for content accessibility on mobile devices. Furthermore, the MWBP Working Group may review the output of the WCAG Working Group

Device Independence Working Group (DIWG)

The MWBP Working Group expects to review and monitor the work of the Device Independence Working Group. The MWBP Working Group may identify requirements that are in the scope of the DIWG.

Hypertext Coordination Group (HCG)

The Hypertext Coordination Group ensures that all W3C Working Groups creating Document specifications review each other's work. The MWI DDWG expects to be represented on the Hypertext Coordination Group.

Other Interaction Domain Working Groups

The work of the following Interaction Domain Working Groups may also be relevant to the MWBP Working Group:

9. Coordination With External Groups

The MWBP Working Group expects to maintain contacts with the following groups external to W3C:

Open Mobile Alliance

Open Mobile Alliance BAC-MAE

The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) Mobile Application Environment (MAE) sub-Working Group within the Browsing and Content (BAC) Working Group ("OMA BAC MAE" all together) drives a number of projects to enhance the applicability and usability of a browsing applications environment that is tuned to the mobile device. The group is tasked with taking existing and emerging web technologies (many from the W3C), and adapting them to the mobile environment.

The outputs of this sub-group are important and influential within the Mobile community. It is therefore the intention of the Working Group to develop a strong working relationship with OMA BAC MAE by making use of the W3C-OMA liaison agreement which defines basic inter-working principles between the two bodies. This may include email communications between the two groups, joint conference calls and joint or co-located face-to-face meetings.

10. Communication Mechanisms

Email

A public, archived mailing list <public-bpwg@w3.org> is used to distribute public versions of documents, for public discussion on them, and for other public communications.

A member-only mailing list, member-bpwg@w3.org, is used to distribute member-only versions of documents, for member-only discussion on them, and for other member-only communications.

Web

The group maintains a public Working Group page. In addition, its member-only Working Group page records the history of the group, provides access to the archives, meeting minutes, updated schedule of deliverables, membership list, and relevant documents and resources. The page is maintained by the W3C Team contact in collaboration with the Chair.

Phone Meetings

The MWBP Working Group plans to meet every week by phone for one hour.

Face-to-face Meetings

Face to face meetings will be arranged 3 to 4 times a year, rotating location between USA west coast, east coast, Europe, and Asia/Pacific/Australia. Face-to-face meetings will be held on at least two separate continents during each year of the Working Group activity.

The Working Group may schedule face-to-face meetings in a manner that maximizes co-location with events that Working Group members would be attending anyway, for example, meetings of the OMA.

Participation in face-to-face meetings is limited to Working Group participants and individuals invited at the discretion of the Chair to specific meetings, as described in section 3.2 of the W3C Process Document.

Meeting details are made available on the W3C Member Calendar and on the member-only Working Group page.

Communication with the Public

The MWBP Working Group home page is the primary way of communicating the group's progress to the public.

11. Voting Mechanisms

The Group works by consensus. In the event of failure to achieve consensus, the Group may resort to a vote, as described in the W3C Process Document in the section 3.4. All group participants in good standing are allowed to vote.

12. Participation

W3C Staff Resource Commitment

It is expected that this Working Group would consume about 0.5 FTE, including administrative logistics.

External Participant Commitment (W3C Members or invited experts)

For participation in the MWBP Working Group, the requirements for meeting attendance and timely response are described in the W3C Process Document. This participation (attending meetings, reviewing documents, preparing drafts or tools) is expected to consume between one day per week.

13. How to Join the Working Group

Information about how to join the Working Group is available on a separate How-to-Join page.

14. Acknowledgements

The following people are herein acknowledged for their contributions to this draft:

Philipp Hoschka <ph@w3.org>, W3C
Rhys Lewis <rhys.lewis@volantis.com>, Volantis Systems Ltd

Daniel Appelquist <daniel.appelquist@vodafone.com>, Vodafone Group Services Limited
$Date: 2007/10/18 14:55:43 $

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