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Mobile Web
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The refers to the World Wide Web as accessed from mobile devices such as cell phones, PDAs, and other pocketable gadgets connected to a public network.
Accessing the Mobile Web does not require a desktop computer. And since it can be accessed with a number of mobile devices, the Internet can now be accessed in remote places previously unconnected to the Internet. For example, medical information could be sent by a mountaineer in difficulty and received by rescuers.
Today, many more people have access to mobile devices than have access to a desktop computer. This is likely to be very significant in developing countries, where web-capable mobile devices may play a similar role for deploying wide-spread Web access as the cell phone has played in providing telephone service.
However, Mobile Web access today still suffers from interoperability and usability problems. This is partly due to the small physical size of the screens of mobile devices and partly due to the incompatibility of many mobile devices with not only computer operating systems, but also the format of much of the information available on the Internet.
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The development of standards is one approach being implemented to improve the interoperability, usability, and accessibility issues surrounding mobile web usage.
The W3C Mobile Web Initiative is a new initiative set up by the W3C to develop best practices and technologies relevant to the Mobile Web. The goal of the initiative is to make browsing the Web from mobile devices more reliable and accessible. The main aim is to evolve standards of data formats from Internet providers that are tailored to the specifications of particular mobile devices. The W3C has published guidelines (Best Practices, Best Practices Checker Software Tool) for mobile content, and is actively addressing the problem of device diversity by establishing a technology to support a repository of Device Descriptions.
W3C is also developing a validating schema to assess the readiness of content for the mobile web, through its mobileOK Scheme, which will help content developers to quickly determine if their content is web-ready. The W3C guidelines and mobile OK approach have not been immune from criticism and an alternative set of guidelines has been made available. This puts the emphasis on Adaptation, which is now seen as the key process in achieving the Ubiquitous Web, when combined with a Device Description Repository. An alternative approach is to adopt a Multi-Web Practice whereby for a given theme a set of URIs for different devices are developed with each URI having content appropriate to its designated device. A bookmark for this set of URIs held in an array is known as an AGI (Array of Graphic Identifiers)
mTLD the registry for .mobi has released a free testing tool called the MobiReady Report to analyze the mobile readiness of website. It does a free page analysis and gives a Mobi Ready score. This report tests the mobile-readiness of the site using industry best practices & standards.
Other standards for the mobile web are being documented and explored for particular applications by interested industry groups, such as the use of the mobile web for the purpose of education and training e.g. Standards for M-Learning Project.
The Mobile Web primarily utilises lightweight pages written in Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) or Wireless Markup Language (WML) to deliver content to mobile devices.
New tools such as Macromedia's Flash Lite enable the production of user interfaces customized for mobile devices. In any case, with the increasing movement away from website-based content towards delivery via RSS, Atom and other formats in which content is divorced from presentation, the issue of microcontent becomes less of a problem as the device rather than the content-provider is enabled to specify how the content is displayed.
Free authoring tools can be utilized to create websites that comply with W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices. mobi Site Galore is a free browser based tool that guarantees a fully standards compliant mobile website.
An alternative approach involves transforming the relationship between mobile devices and the Web are producing some interesting results. A variety of systems are being developed that combine mobile devices with USB flash drives and portable web servers. One example is indi, a software package that runs a personal web server and web site based on Ruby and can be downloaded onto a flash drive. When the USB drive is connected to a computer, it runs its own operating environment rather than relying on that of the computer, meaning that it is compatible with Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows computers. A similar service is provided by WOS, or 'webserver on stick' a USB drive that transforms any computer into an Apache webserver with PHP and MySQL.
Since the explosion of Web 2.0 applications over the last few years, some have been discussing how this technology can be applied to mobile devices. Probably the first technology to cross over onto mobile devices was the blog, resulting in the term moblog. Ajit Jaokar’s Open Gardens blog, takes this further, suggesting adapted versions of del.icio.us and flickr for mobile devices. The usage of mobile devices can potentially affect tagging and sharing data. For example, tags for a visual image could be added at the point when the image is captured, based on physical location, time, and data from other users. Sharing data between mobile devices, for example using Bluetooth, would also depend on physical location: in fact data could be fixed to particular locations, a practice known as ‘air graffiti’ or ‘splash messaging’ and enabled by a combination of spatial information and mapping feeds. Other suggestions, including one for a 'pocket wiki' for syncing wikis written with mobile devices have also been put forward by the blog Web 2.5. While critics point to the difficulties of transferring Web 2.0 concepts such as open standards to the mobile web, advocates present it as a means of bringing information down to the user rather than pushing information up onto the web.
With the advancement of internet faxing, faxes are being sent online. Furthermore, they can be sent and received through Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs).
Advertisers are increasingly using the mobile Web as platform to reach consumers. A recent study by the Online Publishers Association [1] found that mobile Web consumers in the U.S. and Europe are receptive to mobile ads. About one-third (34%) of mobile Web users said they will watch advertisements in exchange for free mobile content. About one-in-ten mobile Web users said they have made a purchase based on a mobile Web ad, while 23% said they have visited a Web site, 13% said they have requested more information about a product or service and 11% said they have gone to a store to check out a product.
First Author, Mobilizing Scholars: using mobile devices in scientific research, May 2006.
Jo Rabin, mTLD Mobile Top Level Domain (dotMobi) Mobile Web Best Practices
Hoschka, Philipp, The W3C Mobile Web Initative (MWI), W3C, 2005.
Passani, Luca, Global Authoring Practices for the Mobile Web, October 2006.
Jaokar, Ajit Mobile web 2.0: Web 2.0 and its impact on mobility and digital convergence, December 25 2005.
Low, Leonard & O'Connell, Margaret, Learner-Centric Design of Digital Mobile Learning, Queensland University of Technology, 2006.
De Waele, Rudy About context and the mobile web, March 15, 2006.
De Waele, Rudy Understanding Mobile 2.0, December 11, 2006
This article was originally created and edited using the Web on mobile devices.