W3C Issues Mobile Device Spec.

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3299821' target='_blank'>http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3299821</a><br /><br /></div>"The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) today recommended a standard to help handheld computers and smartphones communicate with Web servers about displaying content. The schema, the Composite Capability/Preference Profiles (CC/PP): Structure and Vocabularies 1.0 (CC/PP 1.0), is a system for expressing device features and user preferences using the Resource Description Framework (RDF), a spec that makes Web applications work with Web servers. <br /><br />CC//PP is being shepherded by a W3C working group that includes Ericsson, Nokia and Sun Microsystems. While many rich applications using XML or XHTML run on a host of devices from different vendors, they don't all provide access to Web content because there was, until now, no standard language to communicate that data, W3C spokeswoman Janet Daly said."<br /><br />This is great news for mobile devices! I'm not a Web developer, so I don't fully grasp the depth of this announcement, but it sure sounds like a step in the right direction. Now it remains to be seen how widely adopted this becomes...

[Mike Temporale]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong on this. Standards are nice and all, but...

Those of us developing using .NET already have this functionality. The mobile web form would automatically determine the device that is requesting a web page and format the content for the best viewing expereince on that device. Last time I checked they supported over 400 devices, and adding more all the time.

So, while it's nice that W3C is now providing a standard for this, it won't change the way I build web sites. I guess this is a big deal to the Java world. Welcome to the party guys. :roll:

[jsimotas]

Great reply Mike.

This is obviously a telecom centric standard, and what does telecom know about internet standards? Microsoft’s Massive R&D investment is really creating a vacuum in web development, especially with regard to the mobile web.

Opera is also doing some interesting things in this area.

[TANKERx]

.NET may already offer this functionality, but paying a tax to Microsoft everytime someone opens a web browser is not a desired future for most humane people.

Standards are good and this is a small move in the right direction.

[Mike Temporale]

.NET may already offer this functionality, but paying a tax to Microsoft everytime someone opens a web browser is not a desired future for most humane people.

Standards are good and this is a small move in the right direction.

Tax? Huh? Why would you be paying a tax to Microsoft?

First of all, this is a developer tool. Have you ever paid a tax to Microsoft for using an application built using MS Visual C++, VB, C#, etc. ?? No. If anything, you'll pay a license fee, but that goes to the third party developer that created the application, not Microsoft. Microsoft sells the tools to developers. What they build with it is not taxable or licensable by Microsoft.

Second, taxes are paid to the government, not corporations. Last time I checked, Microsoft was still a corporation. :wink:

[David McNamee]

I started reading the spec (http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-CCPP-struct-vocab-20040115/) for CC/PP this morning. First off, this looks like a way for the client terminal (your phone, PDA, etc.) to define its hardware, software, and web browser capabilities using RDF. This is a reasonable thing to want. Currently, each web server (IIS, Apache) needs to maintain its own catalog of devices and their capabilities. In ASP.NET, the catalog is used to determine the appropriate HTML to send to the device. As new devices come to market, server vendors must distribute updates to the catalog. It would be useful if the device reported its own capabilities and reduce the chance that the web server would not know how best to respond. This could be especially useful for devices with specialized accessibility features.

Now comes the part where I'm having a problem. When a web page is requested by a web browser, the browser sends information about itself in an HTTP header called USER_AGENT. There is (currently) no mechanism for a device to send this CC/PP to a server. The HTTP specification would need to be amended to include this information in a header, or (more unlikely) some out-of-band data transfer. Web servers will need to be updated to understand CC/PP information in this new HTTP header. There may also need to be discussion as to how best to include CC/PP data in a SOAP request - although I'd be prone to question any SOAP request that resulted in directly displayable data, it can still happen.

The CC/PP recommendation is a good step, but there are still a couple of pieces missing before we will see widespread adoption.

[TANKERx]

.NET may already offer this functionality, but paying a tax to Microsoft everytime someone opens a web browser is not a desired future for most humane people.

Standards are good and this is a small move in the right direction.

Tax? Huh? Why would you be paying a tax to Microsoft?

First of all, this is a developer tool. Have you ever paid a tax to Microsoft for using an application built using MS Visual C++, VB, C#, etc. ?? No. If anything, you'll pay a license fee, but that goes to the third party developer that created the application, not Microsoft. Microsoft sells the tools to developers. What they build with it is not taxable or licensable by Microsoft.

Second, taxes are paid to the government, not corporations. Last time I checked, Microsoft was still a corporation. :wink:

Chill fella, it's Ok. :roll: