The One Web Principle Or A Multi-Web Practice
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The One Web Principle is a most laudable endeavour. It is a key feature of the Mobile Web Initiative now being supported by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). It is set out within the Best practices for mobile Web application development.
The One Web principle requires that content be accessible on a range of devices irrespective of differences in presentation capabilities and access mechanism. It ensures that content provided by accessing a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) yields a thematically coherent experience when accessed from different devices.
Although the One Web principle is most commendable, there have been no obvious signs that a broad consensus is developing around it. Perhaps for this reason, Roger Johansson of 456 Berea Street, a Swedish web professional specialising in web standards, accessibility, and usability, has very recently written about Best practices for the Mobile Web and declared his support for the One Web principle. As he states, “I believe the One Web principle is worth working towards.”
It will not be easy to get everyone to agree on this One Web principle. Even among those who commented on the Johansson article, there were some naysayers. Currently there are many counter-examples to show that individuals and groups are heading in different directions on this, rather than converging. Particularly for the Mobile world, different standards each have their own powerful advocates.
Even if a single standard were to be agreed, it is not obvious that people will develop websites that embody the One Web principle. The present approach of using different style sheets to render the same content in an acceptable way on different devices presents many challenges. At present, there are a limited number of media that can be used to render (display) content in different formats. The ’screen’ medium style sheet must provide a satisfactory rendering or display on all Desktop PCs. Given that the current PC screen resolutions go from a width of 800 pixels up to 2048 pixels and still counting, few web designers currently achieve this satisfactory rendering at all PC screen widths. Even more variation in screen width is seen in mobile devices, which are covered by the handheld medium style sheet. For handheld devices, screen width can go from 120 pixels to 700 pixels.
It might be possible to consider another one or two media to complement the handheld medium, say a PDA medium for wider handheld devices and a cell phone medium for the very narrow handheld devices. Even so it would then be a significant challenge to design content that will display satisfactorily in all devices by modifying only the content. Currently few web designers seem interested in taking on such a challenge. What happens is that a given web page displays best in one given device. In some cases, it may then be viewable in another device, but somewhat less satisfactorily.
Another mechanical difficulty of the One Web Principle is raised in the Comments on Johansson’s article. If a single web page must contain the content that any of a series of devices might require, then the total web page file must be downloaded by all devices even if they use only a fraction of the content. For example a cell phone might use only 1/10 of the total web page content, but must download the total content. This is a major inefficiency, particularly for mobile devices, faced with high broadband costs and limited battery lives.
Given that the One Web principle is so difficult to apply from a technical viewpoint and given also that there is no ground swell for its widespread adoption, is it really a principle that deserves our support? Is there perhaps another way that equally rich collections of websites can be developed for the many types of devices? Certainly as a minimum, this should cover PCs and Mobile devices. In an ideal world, perhaps it should cover different sized screens for mobile devices. It might even be extended to cover other devices such as screen readers for those with visual acuity problems. The driving idea behind this would be to ensure that versions of any web page would be available and provide a satisfactory user experience for most commonly available devices.
So instead of the One Web principle, the alternative might be designated the Multi-Web Practice. This would encourage website owners to develop in parallel associated web pages that were satisfactory in a variety of devices. Each of the associated web pages would be designed to given an optimal user experience in the specific device for which it was intended.
This can be contrasted with the way the world is evolving. Indeed to a large extent, there seem to be two separate worlds that are developing. One is the more traditional Internet world that has websites that are viewable in Desktop PCs. The new world is the Mobile world. The divided nature of these two worlds is being confirmed by the search engines, which are powerful forces in shaping people’s views. Google for example seems to index separately these two collections of websites. You can even search only among those websites that have already been designed to fit the screen of your phone or device.
Websites viewable only in either the Desktop PC world or in the Mobile world can nevertheless have huge audiences. So it is not surprising that we see such strong growth in the Desktop PC world and even more so in the Mobile world. However there are strong advantages in having related websites available for whichever device an Internet surfer may be using. If someone is surfing on their mobile device, there must be an easy transition to “the same spot in the Internet” if they want to resume their surfing via their Desktop PC.
What is critical in this approach is the way in which related websites are identified. How can we best show that two web pages, one suitable for a Desktop PC and one suitable for a Mobile device, relate to the same content and thus represent “the same spot in the Internet”? That is where StayGoLinks has an important identification or linking method to propose.
.. to be continued
Associated Concepts: URI << One Web || Multi-Web >> AGI
Tags: Mobile, desktop PC, link
StayGoLinks
November 3rd, 2006 at 6:14 pm
[...] An earlier post on The One Web Principle Or A Multi-Web Practice suggested that the One Web Principle will perhaps never get sufficient traction. The reasons for this are that the One Web Principle is [...]