A very interesting conversation is occurring on the Mobile Monday London mailing list that I think echos the sentiment of many of those in the web community in the days and months following the release of the iPhone.
To paraphrase: As mobile devices get better at rendering the regular Web as we know it, like the iPhone, doesn’t the need to create mobile specific content disappear?
Honestly this is a question I’ve largely ignored addressing on the Blue Flavor site for several months, not out of apathy, just because I don’t usually have the time to respond to the deluge of comments that typically comes from pondering such a heated and controversial topic.
But when Jamie, a Mobile Monday London member, posted the topic “The Demise of Mobile???” this week I was compelled to chime in with my two cents. I spent so much time thinking about my response, I wanted to share it here… ominously bringing the debate to our own shores.
Jamie asked:
This may not be everybody’s view but during last nights [Mobile Monday] presentation I picked up the feeling from one [person] in particular that the way forward for the mobile web is to do away with WAP and just have the Internet in HTML on a mobile device so that the user will have a rich experience. I believe this is already possible with the iPhone, iPod Touch, some HTC devices and that Nokia tablet thing. It is clearly evident that my mobile technical knowledge is far from competent but the marketing and advertising side is very important and relevant to me. Should mobile go down this route of having the internet without WAP, would we not see the demise of the mobile marketing agencies, billing service providers, ad serving companies, err basically everything!!!??
I think this question is analogous to the great “One Web” versus “Mobile Web” debate. Will the “regular Web,” of content designed for desktops eventually replace WAP or mobile optimized content? (leaving the technological differences of protocols out of this)
Sure. Hopefully around the same time I get my long over promised flying car ;)
The classic “One Web” argument is to assume that the world wide web should be device agnostic. Markup should be free of device specific formatting and the viewing device should be able to render markup intelligently within the constraints of the device.
(As a point of clarification, there is much confusion over the official W3C One Web statement and the principle I’ve outlined above however many people have chosen to adopt it regardless, therefore the ongoing debate.)
While a worthy technological ideal, I believe the classic One Web argument provides little benefit to how real people use mobile content today. And I believe this will be the case for many years to come.
The problem isn’t the capabilities of the device, or standards, or even operators, as much as we’d like to blame them for being the root of all evil. The problem is context.
Content viewed on a mobile device has an entirely different context than that of the desktop web, a physical context often dealing with their mobility. Mobile content can and should be relevant to the users physical location, to their task at hand. It should address the fact they are viewing the content on a smaller device, over constrained bandwidth, or maybe while driving a car (no one ever does that right?). Or even do something simple like initiating a phone call (I know! how old school!).
The desktop web has no meaningful reason to do this today, so context is largely ignored from the creation of web standards to the creation of web content. Therefore I believe as long as the user has multiple contexts in which they can apply personal relevance to content, there will always be a strong need to serve multiple versions of content, the cursed concept of “multiple Webs.”
I apologize for the soapbox, but no… I believe as mobile devices become more advanced, the need for “multiple Webs” will increase, not decrease. As devices become smarter at detecting physical context it is entirely possible that there will be a version of content for every context. Besides, if there can be more than one Universe, why can’t there be more than one Web?
One day there may be a practical internationally adopted standard to markup content that will allow us to have one source of content and allow for the user to adapt it to many different contexts and applications on the fly. Maybe this will evolve from something like XSLT or WALL, but until tools are created or adopted by the majority of content producers that make it easier and less costly than creating a new site specific to a context, I think it unlikely.
For now I’m betting that I will get my flying car first. I’m more than happy to keep “breaking” the Web in order to put the users needs before technology until is does.
Finally, sorry about the shameless plug, but I truly hope this debate will continue at the upcoming Mobile 2.0 and the Future of Mobile London conferences (I’m involved with both). I think this is an important conversation, I hope to make sure it continues. Thank you Jamie for starting it.
There… I said it!
-Brian
Great post. WAP is dead.
With regard to One Web, in the future I believe we will see one set of standards, but not one set of content. This is already happening with the iPhone for example.
Transcoding of content designed for the desktop Web will never give the same experience as content designed explicitly for mobile. Form factors in mobile are not going to change drastically because of the physical nature of the devices (aside from retinal projection).
Another approach to mobile is to avoid doing site-specific design and use protocols such as RSS, Atom, GData, SyncML, etc. which allow the consumption of content with no presentation. The only real presentation is imposed by the consuming application running on the device (much like an RSS reader). This can lead to a much more responsive and user-friendly experience as the application is designed for the native device interaction model. This leads more to One Web, but of course without a lot of customization, and is not applicable to general application development.
That said, I believe will we see Ajax on mobile begin to take off, though like static content, you won’t have the same code running on the desktop and mobile. Wireless latency, for example, isn’t going away.
<blockquote> The classic “One Web” argument is to assume that the world wide web should be device agnostic. Markup should be free of device specific formatting and the viewing device should be able to render markup intelligently within the constraints of the device. </blockquote>
I think a compromise is needed. When talking HTML/CSS we always make the distinction between semantic naming and poor naming. You don’t call something “leftColumn”. Why couldn’t we extend the semantic problem to the mobile web. We shouldn’t distinguish by device, but by capability.
To make an analogy, when the screen is wide enough to display three columns, it does, otherwise it gets shifted to another layout alternative.
In the future we imagine that specialization will be wide on the mobile end, and the desktop end will be wide open for general use. It would be up to the server provider/programmer to determine how much effort he wants to put into it. How many cases. Ultimately, with frameworks existing - it becomes a lot easier.
Is it appropriate then to say that “One Web of Content” is attainable, but that it should be considered separate from the delivery context? Or stated more clearly, can we create a single source of content that is then displayed and interacted with on each device in a manner that is most appropriate to that device?
Is this the evolution of separating content from presentation? Do we now need to speak about separating content from context? I think you’re right on here. Much like the print medium didn’t translate directly to the web (as much as the NYtimes tried in the early days and some are still trying), we are finding that the PC web does not translate directly to the mobile web.
Good question. One day the ‘mobile web’ will no longer be distinct. But I don’t think that day is today.
1) Not everyone has the iPhone. Maybe in 5 years most of the world’s users have a similarly capable phone. But not yet.
2) A simple mobile site looks better on the iPhone than a ‘full’ web site. Yeah you can passably browse a full web site. But that mobile site still loads faster and is more tailored for your context.
3) The mobile context is just not the same. You don’t have a keyboard or pointer and your screen is quite small. This will never be ‘roughly the same’ as the web and a web experience piped into this context, no matter how cleverly, will not be the same.
In short, I still think it is quite valuable to develop a mobile-specific site. Check back in five years!
<quote>While a worthy technological ideal, I believe the classic One Web argument provides little benefit to how real people use mobile content today.</quote>
Great analysis - I think you’re exactly right - while some ideas might be technically feasible - like One Web - designers and developers who truly want to serve their clients and users will always consider the context of their presentation - and I think presentations of web content will undoubtedly become more varied, not less
“The problem is context.”
I came to much the same conclusion last year but didn’t want to say so because, like you, I didn’t want to invite a(nother) firestorm to my site. Also because I’m not a mobile expert, and so wasn’t sure I was right.
Although I should admit I actually came to this conclusion from the other direction, by considering home media center displays as they relate to desktop web browsers, and how different they are. From there, I kept going to mobile. The spectrum just seems much too wide to expect any one solution to encompass it all…
&otThis is my position on this topic:
You <em>should</em> only have one set of content. But that one set of content is not your HTML, it’s your database. That content in rendered into many different contexts — and (X)HTML is the implementation method for some of them (desktop, mobile, some media centers, etc.). Others contextual implementation methods might be SMS, RSS, e-mail, PDF, Flash, etc.
It’s reasonable to suggest that there should be “one web” from a technological perspective (mobile devices, media centers, and the rest ought to just use (X)HTML and CSS, like desktop browsers) — but these are still different contexts, and need to be treated differently.
Take, for example, sports scores. Let’s say you’re ESPN. In an ideal world, you’ve got <em>one</em> database of sports scores and game data. Consider some of the contexts that data can be used in and the implementation methods for them:
I think the big mistake people — especially Web Standards advocates — make here is believing that HTML is your “content layer” or “structure layer.” It’s not. Your database is your content and structure layer — (X)HTML is one of many “context layers,” if you will. It takes your content and structure from the database and renders it appropriately for a given context.
This is sort of what I was getting at when I wrote about “The New Layers of Web Development”:http://www2.jeffcroft.com/blog/2007/sep/26/new-layers-web-development/, a topic I plan to expand upon in the near future. :)
I guess what I’m saying, in the end, is this: one technological web would be nice and is reasonable (i.e. using HTML and CSS on mobile devices, just like on desktop browser). One set of HTML pages that serve up content for both the mobile and desktop context? That’s just ridiculous.
Good discussion. One of the mistakes people sometimes make when talking about “the web” is not acknowledging that there are a couple different layers of things we see as “the web.”
There is one World Wide Web, which is the global protocol-platform upon which everyone can create an unlimited number of different webs. Each things we call a “website” is, in fact, a web built on the WWW.
There is One Web: the WWW. And, there are many webs: everything built on the WWW.
Beyond the idea of the URL-based link, there is no one, standard, way to make webs on the WWW: there always have been many ways to do it, and there always has to be (or the WWW would be too brittle to support what it is).
Hiring Jeff Croft was a smart decision.
There is One Web: the WWW. And, there are many webs: everything built on the WWW.
Hi Brian:
Reminds me of the original HP Bazaar Handbook byline circa 2003:
“The Game is Outside”
Lars
That said, I believe will we see Ajax on mobile begin to take off, though like static content, you won’t have the same code running on the desktop and mobile. Wireless latency, for example, isn’t going away.
Although I should admit I actually came to this conclusion from the other direction, by considering home media center displays as they relate to desktop web browsers, and how different they are. From there, I kept going to mobile. The spectrum just seems much too wide to expect any one solution to encompass it all…
thanks for all
While a worthy technological ideal, I believe the classic One Web argument provides little benefit to how real people use mobile content today.
There is One Web: the WWW. And, there are many webs: everything built on the WWW.
Thankss
thanks a lot
I just wish everyone went with the standards and we wouldn’t have any problems.
thanks