W3C highlights Mobile Web Initiative at workshop
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The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is considering a new effort called the "W3C Mobile Web Initiative," that will seek to make Web access from mobile devices such as mobile phones and PDAs (personal digital assistants), as simple, easy and convenient as desktop Web access.
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MobileAware Interaction Server, BEA WebLogic Edition is a new technology platform designed to extend BEA WebLogic Portal to the mobile domain, helping to provide multi-channel access to Web and online assets.
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InfoWorld - Microsoft Research workers showed off some of their projects, including several that find new uses for mobile phones, on Monday at a summit in Redmond, Wash.
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Trolltech, a provider of software development platforms and frameworks, hopes to open up mobile application development to Web developers with support for WebKit.Trolltech plans to announce on Monday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that it has integrated QT, its development platform, with WebKit, the Web browser technology used by Apple, Nokia, Google, Motorola and others. The integration should make it easier for developers to build products that integrate online components into mobile phone applications.Trolltech, a Norwegian company that&#160;Nokia recently announced plans to buy, has integrated the tools so that developers can build the bulk of an application using HTML and the rest using C ++. By using HTML to create most of the application, handset makers can save development costs because C ++ engineers are typically harder to find and more expensive to use, said Benoit Schillings, CTO of Trolltech. However, they can still create some features using C ++, which offers more functionality and performance.A handset maker could decide to use HTML to create features that it might want to tweak to appeal to different audiences. For example, a handset maker may want to enlarge visual items on a page in a phone designed for older people, and they can adapt and customize those features quicker using HTML than C ++, Schillings said.Even though the applications may be primarily built using HTML, they don&#39;t have to be browser-based or require an Internet connection, he said. However, he envisions interesting ways to combine offline and online applications.For example, Trolltech has demonstrated an address book application that phone users can access without going online. The application collects information from a user&#39;s Facebook friends, adding photos or other new content from friends&#39; Facebook pages into their address book entry.The Qt WebKit integration will be available as a module in Qt 4.4, which is expected to come out in the second quarter.Trolltech also planned to release Qtopia Phone Edition version 4.3 in Barcelona, adding support for new features including touch-screens. The new Qtopia Synch Agent syncs data between Qtopia and Microsoft Outlook.&#160;
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The first major upgrade to the HTML specification since 1997, HTML 5, was published in an early draft form Tuesday by the World Wide Web Consortium, featuring APIs for drawing two-dimensional graphics and control of audio and video content. The final version of the specification is not expected until late-2010, and it will be up to browser vendors to support it, one analyst stressed.HTML serves as the base markup language for building Web pages. HTML 5 is intended to boost interoperability and reduce software costs by providing rules on handling correct HTML documents and recovering from errors.With version 5, W3C has two main intentions: Catching up to how HTML actually is practiced versus what the specifications say should be practiced and adding new features, said Dan Connolly, a co-chair of the W3C HTML Working Group. "We've been doing a lot of things [since the last upgrade], but basically, the scale of the Web went way up, and the scale of our efforts really didn?t match it until now," he said.New features mostly pertain to Web applications and integrating video as a first-class medium on the Web, Connolly said. In proposing its new features, W3C studied what people do on the Web and what leading-edge Web sites do. "Now it's time to standardize them," so these capabilities can show up in authoring tools, said Connolly.By standardizing these capabilities, they become easier to learn, and it is easier to hire someone who can tackle these tasks, according to Connolly.Other new capabilities planned for HTML 5 include the ability for users to edit documents and parts of documents interactively. Also planned are features to make it easier to represent familiar page elements, including section tags, page footers, and navigation elements. Maintenance of persistent client-side storage is another highlight in version 5.In developing a new standard, W3C was mindful of Web progressions, such as the emergence of media-rich Web sites over static page collections, and innovations like AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML). Recent innovations have boosted demand for a standard for building Web applications that interoperate across mobile and desktop platforms, W3C said.W3C will need adoption of HTML 5 by companies supplying browsers, said Jeffrey Hammond, Forrester senior analyst. "I guess the big comment that I would have is [HTML 5 is] going to be important to the extent that browsers move forward and adopt it," he said. "Developers are interested in writing HTML that goes to as many browsers on as many devices as possible."Mozilla already is supporting HTML 5 in its Firefox browser, the company said."Mozilla has been actively involved in the WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group) applications spec, which is the basis for HTML 5," said, Vlad Vukicevic, infrastructuralist for Mozilla, in a statement released by the company. "Firefox 3 supports many parts of the proposed standard, including DOM (Document Object Model) Storage, offline apps, the HTML Canvas, and many smaller features. While we are supporting these parts, there are other parts of the full HTML 5 proposal that are still under discussion."Other browser companies, including Microsoft, Apple and Opera, are active participants in the HTML Working Group, W3C said.Capabilities offered in HTML 5 currently are being offered through plug-in technologies, such as Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight, Hammond said."The most interesting thing will be what happens when those capabilities get into native HTML and what impact that has on the rich Internet development market," he said. Specific plug-in technologies are not supported on every platform, he said. "[Thusly], as a developer I might be more interested in writing HTML 5," Hammond said.The finalization of the specification will take some time, though. The plan is to have it available in a preliminary candidate recommendation form in the middle of 2009 and as a formal, final recommendation by September 2010, Connolly said. The process is lengthy because it takes time to get the technology to the point where Web authors can rely on it, he said. "It's up to each Web author to decide when he wants to implement new features," he noted.Also new to HTML 5 is it will be the first version implemented under the W3C Royalty-Free Patent Policy. This gives implementers greater assurance that standards can be implemented free of royalties, W3C said.
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The wireless industry meets in Barcelona this week with a bevy of flashy new cell phones, faster networks and more entertainment geared for the small screen taking center stage at the 3GSM World Congress.
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Yang shows off Yahoo Go 3.0, base of its mobile platform, at CES.
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With a direct report from the php|works conference today, DynamicWebPages.de has a summary of the speakers and topics, including the Keynote by Rasmus.
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By David Crow  Browsing the internet on a mobile phone can be frustrating. Cramped screens, tiny keypads and slow download speeds do not lend themselves to the rich multimedia experience offered by Web 2.0.
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Software makers are partnering with third-party wireless applications providers to develop their mobile systems
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Should users be pushed or pampered? Mobile workshop The team here at Freeform Dynamics has reviewed a lot of projects and gathered a lot of feedback from organisations implementing mobile technology over the years. One of the things we hit on in a report we put together earlier this year was how importance it is to engage and train users to minimise mobility related security risks in the right way.â¦
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A growing set of developers is setting to work making Web browsing on a phone match the experience on a PC.Skyfire, a startup in Mountain View, California, joined the fray on Monday when it unveiled a free browser intended to support everything a PC browser can. That includes Flash video, Quicktime, Javascript, AJAX, and more, though not everything may be there right now, according to Nitin Bhandari, Skyfire&#39;s CEO. The browser is now in a private beta test for U.S. users only. The software was demonstrated at the Demo conference in Palm Desert, California.Apple&#39;s iPhone changed the mobile browsing world last year when it drew a huge following with its Safari browser. Unlike most browsers for phones, it lets users view a full, standard Web page all at once and zoom in to make up for the small size of the screen, though it doesn&#39;t support Flash video and some other standard Web features.Meanwhile, more opportunities have opened up for third parties to get any sort of application onto a consumer&#39;s mobile phone. Parts of&#160;Google&#39;s Android development environment&#160;are already available to developers, and Apple is preparing a software development kit for the iPhone. Both Verizon and Sprint Nextel, two of the biggest U.S. operators, have outlined plans to allow any device and any application on mobile networks.&quot;The iPhone has pretty much settled the debate. People want a rich, full Web experience,&quot; Skyfire&#39;s Bhandari said. &quot;There&#39;s a lot of consciousness that that&#39;s the bottom now, and everything now has to be there or above it.&quot;Since the phone&#39;s June debut, Mozilla has started developing a mobile version of Firefox, which looks somewhat like mobile Safari in screenshots on Mozilla&#39;s wiki. However, Mozilla has been vague about when that software will come out. Norwegian browser vendor Opera has its own mobile browser, Opera Mini.Skyfire&#39;s product will be set apart from Opera Mini and others by supporting the full browsing experience, Bhandari said. It does so by relieving the phone from some of the heavy lifting of presenting a Web page. In fact, a server transcodes every page into an efficient protocol that Skyfire has developed over the past 18 months, he said. The additional exchange of packets between phone and server to make that possible isn&#39;t a problem, because the server can carry out tasks much faster than a phone, according to Bhandari.&quot;The delay added by the server is actually such a small percentage of the time we&#39;re actually saving ... that it&#39;s actually a huge benefit in the end-user experience,&quot; Bhandari said. Skyfire operates the servers in its own datacenter.Skyfire can deliver full versions of popular Web sites, such as YouTube and ESPN, as demonstrated in a YouTube video. The zooming function, the critical tool for viewing full-size Web pages on a small screen, is different from the iPhone&#39;s &quot;pinch&quot; and &quot;unpinch&quot; gestures. A gray box appears over part of the Web page, and users can size that box to cover the area of the page they want to see full-screen, then tap on it to zoom in, Bhandari said. The browser also features a search bar and a tab with featured links in categories including news, sports and video.The browser is available only for Windows Mobile 5 and 6 today, but a version for Symbian, as well as an international beta test, are coming later, Bhandari said. Skyfire might also develop versions for Android and for the iPhone once Apple&#39;s SDK becomes available, he said. It is talking with handset makers and mobile operators about having the browser built into phones, but also sees search and advertising as possible revenue sources.In addition to invited testers, a limited number of public users will be allowed to participate in the beta. They can sign up at Skyfire&#39;s Web site.
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The Mobile World Congress, underway February 11-14 in Barcelona, Spain, puts the spotlight on mobile broadband gear, services, software, and strategies. Read CNET's full coverage here.
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The Mobile World Congress is seeing the introduction of a wealth of gadgets to meet needs and desires.
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Upcoming cell phone will offer integrated VoIP features and tools for wireless Web access.
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The browser company launched Tuesday its newest version of its mobile browser, redesigning the interface and improving overall speed.
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Just don't forget basic IT principles Mobile workshop Our recent wireless workshop has demonstrated yet again that the genuine experts in any area are the people out there doing it for real. Indeed, we saw a number of examples of pragmatic ânon trendyâ opinions coming back from experienced Reg Readers that donât necessarily tally with some of the more idealistic views we often hear from the pundits and the press (Reg journalists excluded, of course).â¦