Mobile Access

Working towards seamless Web access from mobile devices

What's new?

In May 2005, W3C has launched the "W3C Mobile Web Initiative" with the goal of making Web access from a mobile device as simple, easy and convenient as Web access from a desktop device.

This page is no longer maintained.

2000-12-19: W3C released XHTML Basic as a W3C Recommendation. XHTML Basic content can be shared across desktop computers, TVs, PDAs, pagers, and mobile phones. See HTML Home Page for more details. Also read the press release and testimonials.
2000-07-21: A bunch of CC/PP Working Drafts has been published. Check the list of current working documents at CC/PP home page.

Mobile access technology has gained a lot of attention recently. There are strong interests in mobile Web access among a wide range of people and organizations involved in mobile access technology, such as hardware manufacturers, software providers, communication service providers, content providers, and end user organizations.

W3C has a particular interest in Mobile Access technology. The Consortium is working towards making information on the World Wide Web accessible to mobile devices, many of which are characterized by small screens, limited keyboard, low bandwidth connection, small memory and so on.

W3C Activity Statement on Mobile Access

If you are a member of the public coming to this site you can read about what W3C are doing in this area in our Mobile Access Activity Statement. Accompanied by a page of explanatory material to bring you up to speed, the Activity Statement sums up W3C's present involvement in this area, including what we see as the technology requirements to make Mobile Access to the Web take off the ground.

Available Resources

The following resources are publicly available.

Technical Reports

WAP Forum - W3C Cooperation White Paper

W3C Note, 30 October 1998, Johan Hjelm, Bruce Martin, Peter King

This Note outlines possible areas of cooperation between the WAP Forum and the W3C.

Composite Capability/Preference Profiles (CC/PP): A user side framework for content negotiation

W3C Note, 27 July 1999, Franklin Reynolds, Johan Hjelm, Spencer Dawkins, Sandeep Singhal

This Note describes a method for using RDF to create a general, yet extensible framework for describing user preferences and device capabilities.

The CC/PP Working Group has been formed to develop this specification further. See the CC/PP page for information about the CC/PP Working Group.

CC/PP exchange protocol based on HTTP Extension Framework

W3C Note, 24 June 1999, Hidetaka Ohto, Johan Hjelm

This Note describes the CC/PP exchange protocol based on the HTTP Extension Framework.

HTML 4.0 Guidelines for Mobile Access

W3C Note, 15 March 1999, Tomihisa Kamada, Takuya Asada, Masayasu Ishikawa, Shin'ichi Matsui

This Note describes guidelines for content authors how to create HTML 4.0 contents to be acceptable to mobile devices as much as possible.

Related Submissions

The following Submissions are related to the Mobile Access Activity.

XML Document Navigation Language: NEC Corporation, 23 March 2000
NaVigation Markup Language (NVML): Fujitsu Limited, 6 August 1999
Annotation of Web Content for Transcoding: IBM, 10 July 1999
WAP Binary XML Content Format: Ericsson, IBM, Motorola, Phone.com, 24 June 1999
POIX: Point Of Interest eXchange Language Specification: ACCESS Co., Ltd., TOYOTA MOTOR CORPORATION, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, SHARP CORPORATION, Aplix Corporation, and NEC Corporation, 24 June 1999
Compact HTML for Small Information Appliances: ACCESS Co., Ltd., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., NEC Corporation, Fujitsu Limited, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, and SONY Corporation, 09 February 1998
HDML - Handheld Device Markup Language: Unwired Planet (now Phone.com), Alcatel Alsthom Recherche, AT&T, GEMPLUS, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Sun Microsystems Corporation, and Tandem Computers Inc., 09 May 1997

Discussion Forums

www-mobile@w3.org: This is an archived public mailing list for technical discussion about mobile access. To subscribe, send email to www-mobile-request@w3.org with the subject "subscribe", or leave the subject line blank and put in the body of the email subscribe yourname@yourhost. DO NOT send subscribe/unsubscribe request to www-mobile@w3.org itself! See the W3C Mailing List Administrativia for more detail. Also, please note that posting to this list is restricted to subscribers. Be sure to subscribe bofore sending your message to this list.
Mobile Access Interest Group (member-only link): The Mobile Access Interest Group is a member forum for discussion about Mobile Access. The charter of the Mobile Access IG is open to the public.
CC/PP Working Group (member-only link): The CC/PP Working Group is developing an RDF-based framework for the management of device profile information. Please see the CC/PP page and the CC/PP Working Group Charter for further information on the constitution of this Working Group.

Workshop on Mobile Access

The W3C Workshop on Mobile Access was held in April 1998, in Tokyo. A number of organizations sent representatives to discuss initial ideas about mobile access to the Web, and most participants expressed that deeper discussions are needed. This Workshop has led to the creation of the Mobile Access Activity and the Mobile Access Interest Group (member-only link).

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Last revised $Date: 2006/03/07 15:07:10 $

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