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The One Web Principle is most laudable in attempting to encourage the creation of web pages that are suitable for a variety of devices. However it presents web designers with many challenges. It also imposes costly burdens on smaller mobile devices since a larger somewhat redundant web page file must be downloaded. Since mobile bandwidth can be costly and mobile device batteries have limited capacity, this redundancy may be one of the biggest arguments against the One Web Principle.

The One Web Principle also seems to be a minimal specification approach. It suggests that a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) should yield a thematically coherent experience when accessed from different devices. Thematic coherence is not the same as an excellent user experience on each of the different devices. It’s a ‘satisficing‘ approach rather than an ‘optimising‘ process, even though the One Web Principle still represents a major technical challenge for web designers. The approach most web designers will adopt is to first design with a particular device in mind. The Desktop PC web designers may then try to satisfy the One Web Principle by modifying their design to accommodate other devices by using appropriate CSS style sheets. Mobile web designers will likely not attempt to apply the One Web Principle since they will have insufficient content to fill a Desktop PC screen.

The One Web Principle has an apparent simplicity and purity that is most appealing. Nevertheless if its technical difficulties block its wide acceptance, then it can never become a useful guiding principle.

Another objective of the One Web Principle is to ensure there are a greater population of web pages suitable for Mobile devices. If the One Web Principle has its problems, an alternative way of ensuring a richer population of web pages for mobile devices must be found. The most direct way is to encourage website owners to create associated web pages that will give good user experiences in several of the most popular devices. This is what is being called the Multi-Web Practice.

Some of these associated web pages can be ‘created’ by using the same content and applying a different style sheet. However a much simpler and more effective way is to design each web page specifically for a particular type of device. This involves fewer compromises to try to give a ‘best fit’ to possibly divergent devices’ requirements.

As a strict minimum, the Multi-Web Practice requires at least two web pages, one for Desktop PCs and one for Mobile devices. The equivalent of the two web pages can be achieved in a single web page with two alternate style sheets, one for Screen (Desktop PC) and one for Handheld. This is only acceptable if the handheld rendering of the web page gives an acceptable user experience and if the total web page file does not create economic or battery life problems for handheld devices.

Given the wide diversity of screen resolutions, the strict minimum of two web pages will leave a number of visitors with less than satisfactory user experiences. A more desirable group of web pages will likely include web pages (5) for the following:

• High Resolution Desktop PC screen (say 2048 pixel width)
• Average Resolution Desktop PC screen (say 1024 pixel width)
• PDA (say 480 pixel width)
• Smart Phone (say 320 pixel width)
• Cell Phone (say 160 pixel width)

Such a group of web pages designed for an optimal user experience for each of these devices would be an excellent example of the Multi-Web Practice.

Associated Concepts:
URI << One Web << Adaptation Or Alternation >> Multi-Web >> AGI