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.
| 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:
- Creation of materials to guide authors in creating web sites that
conform to the requirements of a trustmark (working name: "mobileOK")
based on existing standards and taking account of existing best
practices.
Dimensions of analysis associated with best practice include, but are not limited to- Valid markup
- content-adaptation guidelines (non-normative)
- User experience issues
- Definition the meaning of conformance to best practices
- Development of mechanisms by which the level of conformance to best practices can be assessed.
- Creation of appropriate materials, for site builders and tools vendors,
which may include:
- Authoring guides
- Informative tutorial-type material
- Requirements for a validation tool or tools
- Creation and establishment of the mobileOK trustmark. Issues to be discussed include the provision of machine readable and human readable forms of the mark, discoverability of sites that conform, outreach to the organizations that are consumers of the trustmark.
Success Criteria
- Production of stable documents addressing the work items.
- User community and industry adoption of the group deliverables.
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
| 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