January 17, 2006, 12:27 PM — Developing for wireless Web users is always tricky, because of the limitations inherent to the devices, and the huge variety in the devices' capabilities.
Fortunately, members of the World Wide Web Consortium recognized this problem, and have released a set of Mobile Web Best Practices, guidelines for creating Web content to be accessed from mobile devices.
Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0
The goal of the W3C guidelines is "to improve the user experience of the Web when accessed from such devices." The document was published Jan 13th, 2006, and the W3C is taking feedback on the document through February 17th.
These best practices will be important to:
* Developers that create content for mobile devices
* Network operators that transform content for mobile devices
* Browser developers and others that "realize content for users to perceive"
* Authoring tool developers
* Content manipulation tool developers
* People that test conformance and compatibility of mobile content
The best practices outline some high-level requirements that are unique to mobile design, and then provide specific recommendations for dealing with these requirements.
The best practices are broken down into five categories:
* Overall Behavior (Process)
* Navigation and Links
* Page Layout and Content
* Page Definition
* Input
General Principals for Effective Mobile Web Design
The first section, Overall Behavior, discusses underlying principles that the W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has identified as critical for effective mobile Web design. Four concepts are discussed which create a sort of "philosophy" of developing mobile content.
Establish the Context of the Device - the W3C recommends taking all reasonable steps to find out about the mobile client (device and browser), and any adaptation or transformation that takes place when the client views content. This recommendation applies to developers and content creators, as well as the infrastructure itself. It's impossible to deliver effective content without knowing the client.
Exploit Client Capabilities - the W3C recommends against using a lowest-common-denominator approach. Instead, it recommends using whatever knowledge of the client device is available to provide a customized response, by device.
Work around deficient implementations - this recommendation goes beyond the idea of exploiting client capabilities, and suggests that developers find ways to make their content and applications work effectively on the end device, even if the device itself is clunky. This is a variation on the idea that "the customer is always right." Users often don't have control over their client's capabilities. It may be difficult or impossible to upgrade the mobile browser application. Because of this, developers should "Take reasonable steps to work around deficient implementations."
Test on actual client devices - any site should be tested with the browsers being used to access the site. This is especially critical for mobile browsers, because they vary much more dramatically in how they work than do current desktop web browsers. Mobile content should be tested on as wide a range of devices as possible. Once the mobile web content is live, it may be possible to refine the list of test devices by using the information in access logs.
There remaining sections of the Mobile Web Best Practices dig into more specific details.
As mobile devices become ubiquitous accessories, and as they evolve into mobile computing platforms, understanding and adhering to best practices for mobile content development will become critical for companies serving mobile Web customers.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0
