W3C

Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group Charter

The Mobile Web Best Practices worked under this charter until July 2008; it has been rechartered at that date, and this charter is kept mostly for historical reasons.

The mission of the Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group (BPWG), part of the Mobile Web Initiative Activity, 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.

Join the Best Practices Working Group.

End date 31 December 2008
Confidentiality Proceedings are publicly accessible
Initial Chair Daniel Appelquist, Vodafone
Jo Rabin, mTLD
Initial Team Contact
(FTE %: 40)
Michael(tm) Smith, W3C/Keio
Usual Meeting Schedule Teleconferences: Weekly
Face-to-face: 3-4 per year

Scope

The main objective of the Best Practices Working Group (BPWG) 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, browser-enabled phones and touch-screen devices.

Following the best practice guidelines will be benefit Web site providers by enabling more users to access their content and services from more types of devices.

The intent of the Best Practices 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 Best Practices Working Group are intended to enable content to be seamlessly perceived across a range of device form factors. Although mobile browsing user experience is a function of multiple variables — including a variety of device-, browser-, network- and content-related factors — the BPWG will be considering only those directly relevant to its primary focus on content authoring and adaptation guidelines.

The scope of the Best Practices Working Group consists of the following specific items:

Success Criteria

Out of Scope

There is no intent for the Best Practices 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 organizations.

Deliverables

This section outlines the deliverables the group will produce.

W3C Recommendation-track Deliverables

W3C Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0: Basic Guidelines
A W3C Recommendation; currently at Proposed Recommendation status
W3C mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0
A W3C Recommendation; working draft in last call
mobileOK Basic checker: Reference Implementation and Test Suite
Advanced Delivery Context
This would describe a common set of features that authors can develop content for, which is more powerful than the “Default Delivery Context” described in Best Practices “Basic Guidelines”
Mobile Web Best Practices 2.0
A W3C Recommendation that may revise Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0: Basic Guidelines if necessary, and will provide additional guidance to developing content suitable for the Advanced Delivery Context
mobileOK Tests (second level)
A W3C Recommendation that will offer a level of the mobileOK trustmark that implies a higher degree of conformance to the Best Practices. The name of this second level will be determined by the working group.
Labels for mobileOK
A W3C Recommendation describing how to label content as meeting some level of mobileOK and to find content so labeled, including vocabulary specifications as necessary.

Supporting Materials

Deliverables may (subject to resources, progress on the core deliverable and the groups assessment of what is needed) also include

  • W3C mobileOK Scheme 1.0, a non-normative W3C Note that ties the pieces of mobileOK together and will also have definitive information on how and when the trustmark can be used
  • Updated versions, if necessary, of existing documents
  • A non-normative W3C Recommendation on content adaptation, possibly including negotiation and process of adaptation, with the intention of providing guidance both to authors and to providers of adaptation services (any normative work related to content adaptation that may be identified will be passed to other appropriate groups)
  • guidelines and trustmarks for authoring-tool production
  • Information developed jointly with WAI on how to meet the combined challenges of accessibility and the mobile Web.

Milestones

Milestones
Note: The group will document significant changes from this initial schedule on the group home page.
Specification FPWD LC CR PR Rec
Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 Q4 2007
mobileOK Basic: Tests 1.0 Q4 2007 Q1 2008
mobileOK Scheme Q4 2007
mobileOK Basic checker: Reference Implementation and Test Suite Q4 2007
mobileOK Labels Q4 2007 Q1 2008
Mobile Web Best Practices 2.0 Q4 2007 Q3 2008 Q4 2008
mobileOK Tests (second level) Q4 2007 Q3 2008 Q4 2008
Advanced Delivery Context Q2 2008
Future of Best Practices Q3 2008 Q4 2008

The Supporting Materials have not been included in the preceding set of milestones. If the BPWG (during its charter) determines that some of those are important, the milestones listed on the group page will be adjusted to add them.

Timeline View Summary

  • Q4 2007: F2F- First face to face meeting under new Charter
  • Q4 2007: PR - mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0
  • Q4 2007: REC- Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0
  • Q4 2007: WD - mobileOK Scheme
  • Q4 2007: WD - mobileOK Basic checker: Reference Implementation and Tests
  • Q4 2007: LC - mobileOK Labels
  • Q4 2007: WD - Mobile Web Best Practices 2.0
  • Q4 2007: WD - mobileOK Tests (second level)
  • Q1 2007: REC- mobileOK Basic: Tests 1.0
  • Q1 2008: PR - mobile OK Labels
  • Q2 2008: LC - Advanced Delivery Context
  • Q3 2008: LC - Mobile Web Best Practices 2.0
  • Q3 2008: PR - mobileOK Tests (second level)
  • Q3 2008: ** - First draft, Future of Best Practices work proposal
  • Q4 2008: REC- Mobile Web Best Practices 2.0
  • Q4 2008: REC- mobileOK Tests (second level)
  • Q4 2008: ** - Final proposal, Future of Best Practices work

Dependencies

Mobile Web Test Suites Working Group
The Best Practices Working Group will have requirements for tests and will need test results in order to produce some of its deliverables.
POWDER Working Group
Following on from the work of the Web Content Labels incubator group (WCL-XG), the POWDER working group will produce technology for identifying resources or groups of resources that are conformant to specified criteria. This group plans to make use of the output of the POWDER working group as the underlying technology for the MobileOK trustmark. We will therefore be closely monitoring this work and inputting into the discussions. We will make every effort to co-locate meetings with the POWDER working group during this charter period in order to facilitate this close liaison.
Web Accessibility Initiative
The Best Practices 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 Best Practices may review the output of the WCAG Working Group
Hypertext Coordination Group
The Best Practices Working Group will participate in the Hypertext Coordination Group.

Related

Mobile Web Initiative Steering Committee
The Best Practices Working Group exists within the framework of the Mobile Web Initiative. The Best Practices Working Group chair will sit on the MWI Steering Committee.
Open Mobile Alliance: Browsing Technologies Working Group
The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) Browsing Technologies (BT) working group 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 BT 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.
Mobile Web in Developing Countries
This group will analyze the output of the Mobile Web in Developing Countries workshop to determine if any of the findings of that workshop can inform the group's activities.
Device Descriptions Working Group (DDWG)
As the DDWG continues its work on defining an architecture for a distributed device information repository, we will continue to liaise with them to ensure that this repository will meet the needs of content authors wishing to implement the Mobile Web Best Practices. We will make every effort to co-locate meetings with the Device Descriptions working group during this charter period in order to facilitate this close liaison.
Ubiquitous Web Applications Working Group
The Best Practices Working Group expects to review and monitor the work of the Ubiquitous Web Applications Working Group. The Best Practices Working Group may identify requirements that are in the scope of the Ubiquitous Web Applications Working Group.
Rich Web Clients Activity
This group will reach out to the W3C Rich Web Clients activity (specifically the Web APIs and Web Application Formats working groups), specifically to determine what role AJAX best practices might best play in the work of the Best Practices Working Group.
Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) Working Group
This group will remain connected to the ongoing efforts in the Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) working group and will review drafts as required.

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

Compound Document Formats
Multimodal Interaction
Synchronized Multimedia

Furthermore, the Best Practices Working Group expects to follow these W3C Recommendations:

Participation

Effective participation in the Best Practices Working Group is expected to consume one work day per week for each participant.

Participants are reminded of the Good Standing requirements of the W3C Process.

Communication

This group uses the public mailing list public-bpwg@w3.org (archive) to distribute all documents and for discussions about everything except logistics and “exceptional” technical discussions

This group uses Member-only, member-bpwg@w3.org (archive) strictly for discussions about logistics and “exceptional” technical discussions; all other discussion takes place on the public list.

Information about the group (deliverables, participants, face-to-face meetings, teleconferences, etc.) is available from the Best Practices Working Group home page.

Decision Policy

As explained in the Process Document (section 3.3), this group will seek to make decisions when there is consensus. When the Chair puts a question and observes dissent, after due consideration of different opinions, the Chair should record a decision (possibly after a formal vote) and any objections, and move on.

Patent Policy

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.

For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the W3C Patent Policy Implementation.

About this Charter

This charter for the Best Practices Working Group has been created according to section 6.2 of the Process Document. In the event of a conflict between this document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.

Please also see the previous charter for this group.


$Date: 2008/07/30 19:30:09 $