Copyright © 2006-2008 W3C ® ( MIT , ERCIM , Keio ), All Rights Reserved. W3C liability , trademark and document use rules apply.
The mobileOK scheme allows content providers to promote their content as being suitable for use on very basic mobile devices. This document provides an overview of the scheme and references the documentation that composes it.
This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at http://www.w3.org/TR/.
This is an Editor's Draft of the W3C mobileOK Scheme. It follows a period of evolution during which the Working Group considered defining two levels of mobileOK conformance, each with its own set of tests. mobileOK is presented here as a simplified and unified scheme in which the relationship with the Best Practices document, the Basic Tests and the Checker is made explicit. It represents substantial change from the previously published version.
The Working Group expects to publish this as a Note and not as a Recommendation track document.
Publication as a Editor's Draft does not imply endorsement by the Best Practices Working Group or by W3C Membership. This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than work in progress.
This document has been produced by the Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group as part of the Mobile Web Initiative . Please send comments on this document to the working group's public email list public-bpwg-comments@w3.org , a publicly archived mailing list .
This document was produced by a group operating under the 5 February 2004 W3C Patent Policy . W3C maintains a public list of any patent disclosures made in connection with the deliverables of the group; that page also includes instructions for disclosing a patent. An individual who has actual knowledge of a patent which the individual believes contains Essential Claim(s) must disclose the information in accordance with section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy .
mobileOK is designed to improve the Web experience for users of mobile devices by rewarding content providers that adhere to good practice when delivering content to them.
mobileOK says nothing about what may be delivered to non-mobile devices; furthermore, mobileOK does not imply endorsement or suitability of content. For example, it must not be assumed that mobileOK content is of higher informational value, is more reliable, more trustworthy, is or is not appropriate for children etc.
mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0 [ mobileOK ] specifies a number of tests that HTTP responses must pass when a URI is requested with a specific set of HTTP headers in the request. The tests are designed to be machine processable and to provide confidence that content will display well on very basic mobile devices.
mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0 is itself based on Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 [ BP ], which provides a set of sixty guidelines for making content work well across a wide variety of mobile devices.
The HTTP Request headers used in mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0 identify a hypothetical user agent called the "Default Delivery Context" (DDC). The values of the key properties of the DDC (screen width, formats supported and other basic characteristics) are set at the minimum possible, while still supporting a Web experience.
The DDC is thus not a target to aspire to, it merely sets a base line below which content providers do not need to provide their content. It is expected that content providers, as well as targetting DDC level devices, will wish also to provide non-mobileOK experiences for more advanced mobile devices.
A software package called the mobileOK Checker [ CHECK ], has been developed by the Best Practices Working Group to provide automated checking of conformance. The package is in Java, and is open source. It is available under a W3C License .
W3C has created a Web interface as part of the W3C Validator , which uses this package. Other Web based checkers, by dotMobi (see ready.mobi ) and CTIC (see TAWDIS ) have also been created that adhere to the mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0 [ mobileOK ].
Content Providers may wish to identify that their content is mobileOK conformant. This means that it can be requested so that the response conforms to mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0 [ mobileOK ] and hence will provide at least a functional user experience on mobile devices. A claim may only be made of a URI that when dereferenced in the manner described in [ mobileOK ] yields a response that passes all the tests contained in mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0. Such a claim says nothing about other experiences that may be provided at the same URI, when dereferenced in a different way (e.g. with different User-Agent and Accept HTTP headers).
W3C
provides
a
mobileOK
icon
(trustmark)
that
represents
a
claim
that
the
content
on
which
the
icon
is
found
is
mobileOK
conformant
as
descibed
described
above.
The
trustmark
icon
is
most
appropriately
used
on
desktop
representations
of
a
resource
for
which
a
mobileOK
representation
is
also
available.
In
such
a
situation
it
acts
as
a
signal
to
a
desktop
user
that
the
content
or
service
they
are
using
is
also
available
on
a
mobile
device.
Display
of
the
mobileOK
trustmark
icon
is
usually
inappropriate
on
a
mobile
device
since
whether
the
content
is
usable
on
their
device
or
not
will
be
fully
apparent
without
it.
When
displaying
a
mobileOK
trustmark,
icon,
the
image
should
be
served
from
the
same
server
as
the
resource,
not
from
the
W3C
site.
Note
that
the
image
is
provided
in
PNG
format
and
hence
is
not
suitable
for
use
on
mobileOK
representations
of
pages,
though
it
may
be
used
on
other
representations.
The
trustmark
icon
is
issued
under
W3C
copyright
and
may
only
be
used
in
accordance
with
the
W3C
mobileOK
license
[
LICENSE
],
the
key
feature
being
that
it
may
only
be
used
in
representations
of
resources
that,
when
dereferenced
in
accordance
with
the
mobileOK
Basic
Tests
1.0,
pass
those
tests.
To enhance discoverability of mobileOK content, providers may wish to identify their material as being mobileOK using POWDER (see Claiming mobileOK Conformance Using POWDER ). Content should then be linked to a claim as described in 2.2.3 Linking Resources to Claims .
The Protocol for Web Description Resources [ POWDER ] provides a means through which a claim of mobileOK conformance may be made about many resources at once, such as all those available from a Web site. Importantly, POWDER also provides a means of identifying the person, organization or entity that made the claim. These two features make POWDER's Description Resources an ideal transport mechanism for mobileOK conformance claims (mobileOK was a key use case for POWDER).
In
the
following
(fictitious)
example,
on
25th
June
2008
(line
5),
the
organization
described
at
http://www.example.com/company.rdf#me
(line
4)
claimed
that
all
the
resources
available
from
example.com
(lines
9-11)
were
mobileOK
(line
13).
This
makes
use
of
a
one-class
RDF
vocabulary
with
namespace
http://www.w3.org/2008/06/mobileOK#
and
class
name
Conformant
.
1 <?xml version="1.0"?> 2 <powder xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2007/05/powder#"> 3 <attribution> 4 <issuedby src="http://www.example.com/company.rdf#me" /> 5 <issued>2008-06-25T00:00:00</issued> 6 <supportedby src="http://example.net/checker/" /> 7 </attribution> 8 <dr> 9 <iriset> 10 <includehosts>example.com</includehosts> 11 </iriset> 12 <descriptorset> 13 <typeof src="http://www.w3.org/2008/06/mobileOK#Conformant" /> 14 <displaytext>The example.com webiste conforms to mobileOK</displaytext> 15 <displayicon src="http://www.example.com/images/mobileOK.png" /> 16 </descriptorset> 17 </dr> 18 </powder>
http://www.example.com/company.rdf#me
(line
4)
should
lead
to
an
RDF
resource
that
describes
the
entity
(either
the
foaf:Agent
or
dcterms:Agent
)
that
provided
the
Description
Resource.
It
is
open
to
that
organization
to
provide
authentication
methods
to
support
its
claim
of
mobileOK
conformance.
Note
also
in
line
6
that
POWDER's
supportedby
element
has
been
used
to
refer
to
http://example.net/checker/,
the
implication
being
that
the
content
of
the
described
Web
site
has
been
tested
using
that
checker.
Lines
14
and
15
provide
textual
and
graphical
data
that
user
agents
may
display
to
end
users.
link
Element
All
mobileOK
resources
are
HTML.
In
the
following
example
a
powder
document
is
linked
using
the
link
element
(line
3).
The
value
of
the
rel
attribute,
"describedby"
is
namespaced
by
the
profile
attribute
of
the
head
element
(line
2)
in
versions
of
HTML
that
support
it.
1 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> 2 <head profile="http://www.w3.org/2007/11/powder-profile"> 3 <link rel="describedby" href="powder.xml" type="text/powder+xml"/> 4 <title>Welcome to example.com </title> 5 </head> 6 <body> 7 <p>Today's content is ....</p> 8 </body> 9 </html>
link
Header
In many application environments it can also be appropriate to use HTTP Link [ HTTP Link ] headers. The following header is semantically equivalent to the HTML link header above.
Link: <powder.xml>; rel="describedby" type="text/powder+xml";
Other machine readable means of making a claim of mobileOK conformance are available. For example the following RDF triple asserts that the URI http://example.com is mobileOK conformant:
<
http://example.com
>
rdf:type
<
http://www.w3.org/2008/06/mobileOK#conformant>
Other forms of expressing a claim may become available in the future.
The editors would like to thank members of the BPWG for contributions of various kinds.