Was Sir Tim Berners-Lee Quixotic?
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Sir Tim Berners-Lee gave the Keynote Address at the Opening Day of 3GSM 2007 in Barcelona. It was entitled, “Innovation in Technology and Standards“.
The inventor of the Web recounted how in some ways it was so easy.
The reason that I could just design the Web by myself and set it running on a couple of computers without asking anyone, was that the Internet in turn had been designed to be used for anything, constraining its users as little as possible. So this is one of the qualities of an open platform: it is built to enable, not to control, and it does not try to second-guess the things, which will be built using it.
Now we have the Mobile Web and there are many interest groups involved. Ajit Jaokar highlighted what was particularly important to him in the Keynote Address. This included the following on the Mobile Web:
What are the standards? Basically, the same standards as the current Web uses. That is the most important point. It is one Web. The Web works on phones.
Another news item this week caused me to question whether Berners-Lee was being quixotic in saying this. Jeremy Fuksa mentioned the availability of the Barkley’s Mobile Web Emulator. This allows you to see how well your site renders on a few different cell phones.
There was some discussion on this in the Cre8asite Forums. The consensus seemed to be that most websites designed with style sheets for handheld devices will not display well on cell phones, since the cell phone browsers ignore the style sheets. It’s just one reminder, and there are many others, of the multitudes who must buy in to the principles of the One Web if it is to become a reality.
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