Category: Mobility

So last week, I co-chaired a W3C workshop on the “Mobile Web.” It was really challenging bringing such a diverse group of companies together for this, but in the end it was a great success. Read the paper I wrote for Vodafone and see what I had to say about this, and read the papers from the other participants. Also, read the C-Net coverage! (Although, C-Net got the category wrong — it’s not “Web Services,” that’s something different. Sigh…) An aspect of my job that I really enjoy is that I am actually passionate about these issues. I believe that working for a better mobile web would be a good thing not just because it serves the commercial interests of my company, but because I think it would be a good thing overall. I hate broken things, and the Mobile Web is broken right now. The industry collectively has a chance to fix things, but only if it comes together. I’ll be working hard over the coming months to make that happen — leave a comment here if you have any ideas.

So I’m here in Sophia Antipolis at this W3C working group meeting for XML Compound Documents. It doesn’t sound very sexy, but actually… well OK it isn’t very sexy. But it’s potentially important for the development of the Mobile Web — in particular how XHTML and SVG can be combined to produce better user experiences on mobile devices. Better in what sense? A well defined language profile for combining XHTML and SVG means that content producers (“Web Sites”) can have more confidence that markup will work across a range of devices and therefore more confidence that people will be able to use their services.