W3C Issues Mobile Web Best Practices as Candidate Recommendation

Today, W3C reached an important milestone toward its mission of making it as easy to use the Web on a mobile device as on a desktop computer. W3C has published Mobile Web Best Practices a Candidate Recommendation, an indication of broad consensus on the technical content of the document.

W3C now invites implementation experience from the community. Industry leaders are declaring their support for the guidelines, which explain how to develop Web sites that work on mobile devices. “There are many devices, but one Web,” said Daniel Appelquist, chair of the Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group. “Practical guidelines on how to create content once that can be delivered to the plethora of devices saves developers and organizations time and money, and has the added benefit of not breaking the Web. “

W3C Distills Principles and Techniques for Efficient Delivery of Web Content

“Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0” condenses the experience of many mobile Web stakeholders into practical advice on creating content that will work well on mobile devices. Authors and other content producers can find instructions on how to create content that makes browsing convenient on mobile devices and avoids known pitfalls, such as pop-ups and page-scrolling.

Guidelines Checker and Techniques Wiki Available to Mobile Web Developers

W3C invites the designers of Web sites and content management systems to read the guidelines, make implementations, and test their results with the alpha version of a guidelines checker

In order to build a strong community of mobile Web developers, W3C has also launched a wiki to collect observations and suggestions on techniques and implementation experience of Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0.

Mobile Web Best Practices Enjoys Broad Industry and Consumer Support

“Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0” was developed by a Working Group that included representatives from 30 organizations: Afilias Limited, America Online, Inc. (AOL), ANEC European Association for the Co-ordination of Consumer Representation in Standardisation, Argo Interactive Ltd, AT&T, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), elmundo.es, Ericsson, France Telecom, Fundación CTIC (Centro Tecnológico para el Desarrollo en Asturias de las Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación), Fundación ONCE, Go Daddy.com, Google, Inc., Indus Net Technologies, International Webmasters Association / HTML Writers Guild (IWA-HWG), Internet Content Rating Association, Microsoft Corporation, dotMobi (mTLD Top Level Domain, Ltd.), Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Openwave Systems Inc., Opera Software, Segala, Sevenval AG, T-Online International AG, The Boeing Company, TIM Italia SpA, University of Helsinki, Vodafone and Volantis Systems Ltd.

This work is part of the W3C Mobile Web Initiative, which is supported by nineteen MWI Sponsors, including key players in the mobile production chain: Afilias, Argogroup, Bango.net, dotMobi, Drutt Corporation, Ericsson, France Telecom, HP, Jataayu Software, MobileAware, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Opera Software, TIM Italia, RuleSpace, Segala, Sevenval, Vodafone, and Volantis.