W3C Initiatives

In spring of 2005, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) created the Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) which consists of several working groups. The group’s goal was to increase recognition of standards and best practices of publishing to the Mobile Web.

The W3C MWI, of which dotMobi is a sponsor, includes industry leading mobile service providers, handset makers, a variety of mobile publishers and mobile developers. The initial groups are Mobile Web Best Practices (BPWG) and the Device Description Working Group (DDWG).

The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group’s goal is “develop a set of technical best practices and associated materials in support of development of Web sites that provide an appropriate user experience on mobile devices.”

The Device Description Working Group’s goal has a more technical focus “to enable the development of globally accessible, sustainable data and services that provide device description information applicable to content adaptation.”  The organization addresses the problems with inconsistent or incomplete User Agent Profiles (UA-Profs) that are required to execute content adaptation to specific mobile devices.