Mobile Web
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The Mobile Web refers to the World Wide Web as accessed from mobile devices such as cell phones, PDAs, and other portable gadgets connected to a public network. Access does not require a desktop computer.
Today, many more people have access to mobile devices than a desktop computer.
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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[edit] Standards
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.
[edit] Development
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 or Sun's J2ME 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.
[edit] Top-level Domain
The .mobi sponsored top-level domain was launched specifically for the mobile internet by a consortium of companies including Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung, and Vodafone. By forcing sites to comply with mobile web standards, .mobi ensures visitors a consistent and optimized experience on their mobile device.
[edit] Mobile Web 2.0
An example Web 2.0 technology used on the mobile web is the blog, resulting in the term moblog. Critics point to the difficulties of transferring Web 2.0 concepts such as open standards to the mobile web. On the other hand, advocates present it as a means of pushing information up onto the web in addition to bringing information down to the user.[1]
[edit] Faxing via Mobile Web
With the advancement of internet faxing, faxes are being sent online. Furthermore, they can be sent and received through Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs).
[edit] Advertising on the Mobile Web
Advertisers are increasingly using the mobile Web as platform to reach consumers. A recent study by the Online Publishers Association [2] reports that 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.
[edit] Limitations
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Though internet access "on the go" provides advantages to many, such as the ability to communicate by email with others and obtain information anywhere, the web, accessed from mobile devices, has a large number of limitations. These include:
- Small screen size - This makes it difficult or impossible to see text and graphics dependent on the standard size of a desktop computer screen.
- Lack of windows - On a desktop computer, the ability to open more than one window at a time allows for multi-tasking and for easy revert to a previous page. On mobile web, only one page can be displayed at a time, and pages can only be viewed in the sequence they were originally accessed.
- Navigation - Mobile devices do not use a mouselike pointer, but rather simply an up and down function for scrolling, thereby limiting the flexibility in navigation.
- Types of pages accessible - Many sites that can be accessed on a desktop cannot on a mobile device. Many devices cannot access pages with a secured connection, Flash or other similar software, PDFs, or video sites.
- Speed - On most mobile devices, the speed of service is very slow, often slower than dial-up internet access.
- Broken pages - On many devices, a single page as viewed on a desktop is broken into segments, which are each treated as a separate page. Paired with the slow speed, navigation between these pages is slow.
- Compressed pages - Many pages, in their conversion to mobile format, are squeezed into an order different from how they would customarily be viewed on a desktop computer.
- Size of messages - Many devices have limits on the number of characters that can be sent in an email message.
[edit] References
- First Author, Mobilizing Scholars: using mobile devices in scientific research, May 2006.
- Jo Rabin, mTLD Mobile Top Level Domain (dotMobi), Mobile Web Best Practices, 2 November 2006
- Hoschka, Philipp, The W3C Mobile Web Initiative (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.
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