Mobile Web Test Suites Working Group Blog

Last May 2009 the Mobile Web Test Suites Working Group (MWTS) volunteers were polishing up the Web Compatibility Test for Mobile Browsers(WCTMB) version one and thinking of a new test. Nine months later our next little baby is due, version two of the WCTMB.

In this fresh forward looking 2.0 test we hope to encourage key technologies that will make the mobile platform simply rock. Of course we have the usual suspects like AJAX support and canvas which were tested in the WCTMB v1 test too. However we gear up by checking for Geolocation support which is very relevant to mobile users and for various helpful offline technologies like application cache and Web storage. These offline technologies help the Web in areas where Internet may be unreliable, which is a lot of places on most mobile devices!

We also make a daring leap into the fray to ask for support of video and audio, which is quite demanding on a mobile device. We allow for all sorts of codecs, though midi files and animated gifs won't pass. :)

We also test for new input types, rich text editing and font face support which could be a workaround where phones have a poor font, for instance for a particular locale. No matter where you are from or what language you speak, we hope to entangle you in the Web with any device to hand.

So go and test your mobile with the new test and if your browser scores a 110% you are cheating.

Thank you and we welcome your feedback on our mailing list.

We have just published a Working Group Note called A Method for Writing Testable Conformance Requirements. This document presents a method for writing, marking-up, and analyzing conformance requirements in technical specifications that can help other Working Groups develop better specifications more quickly.

We derived this methodology from our collaboration with the Web Applications Working Group on the development of the test suite for the Widgets Packaging & Configuration specification.

Feedback on the document is more than welcome!

A growing number of W3C specifications describe JavaScript APIs using WebIDL, including HTML5, XmlHTTPRequest, the Geolocation API, and the many other APIs in development in the Web Applications and Device APIs and Policy Working Groups.

WebIDL allows to define these interfaces with their methods and properties in an abstract language, while giving specifics on how they have to be implemented in EcmaScript (JavaScript’s official name).

Using that abstract language makes it possible to automatically generate a number of test cases to check the specified interfaces are correctly implemented (or as often, correctly specified!): I discovered a few weeks ago the great WTTJS tool that does exactly this — it takes a WebIDL definition, some indications on how to instantiate the declared interfaces, and it then generates a bunch of test cases that can easily be used directly in browsers.

For instance, after having extracted the WebIDL from the Geolocation API using the WebIDL checker, I got a set of test cases that allowed me to find out that the Geolocation API was not clear enough on defining which interfaces were supposed to be directly instantiable — this has now been partially corrected in the latest Editors draft.

The WebIDL specification is still evolving, and as a result, not all its constructs are currently supported in WTTJS, so running it on a WebIDLs fragments that use the latest syntax capabilities will likely require some light hand edits; but it certainly remains a great tool to help in the development of JavaScript specifications. Thank you, Wakaba!