Content Transformation and "The Manifesto"
There has been a lot of discussion in recent days on Luca's Manifesto. I just wanted to note that the W3C Content Transformation Task Force is working with industry players to find a resolution to this difficult problem. The goal is to reconcile the objectives of those various players particularly "to help provide users with an acceptable experience of the Web on Mobile". I represent dotMobi on the Task Force and in fact am the editor of the Guidelines that the Task Force is producing.
The two main use cases are a) Content Providers who provide a tailored mobile user experience don't want their content messed up and transforming proxies should leave their content alone. b) Many content providers, unfortunately, don't provide a tailored user experience for mobile and often provide an unusable experience for mobile users. Sometimes, to add icing to the cake, they say "we don't recognize your browser". We at dotMobi believe (and this is also the position of the Task Force) that creation of specially tailored mobile experiences is generally desirable and things that disrupt the delivery of those experiences are altogether counter-productive. Content Transformation does have an important role to play in allowing access from mobile to the desktop Web that hasn't seen the error of its ways, yet.
There are a lot of complex issues here, and unfortunately HTTP itself does not say much to help resolve them. This means that the work is proceeding cautiously, of necessity, since a balance of objectives must be taken into account and care must be taken not to break anything on the way. This is against a background of a number of existing transformation implementations in the field that seem clearly to be making life even harder for the mobile community than it is already, and disrupting people's livelihoods. Producing guidelines that state industry consensus is clearly urgent. As a starting point we (dotMobi) have been suggesting that Content Providers use the Cache-Control: no-transform and Vary HTTP Headers (see http://mobiforge.com/developing/blog/content-transformation-addendum-web-browsing-style-guide).
The manifesto makes a number of useful contributions to the discussion, but in other respects doesn't achieve the objective of helping to provide, as far as possible, a reasonable User Experience of the Web as a whole. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the manifesto seems to address use case a) to the exclusion of use case b). It is really important to address this use case, since in practice people who deploy transformation solutions won't be motivated to change them unless their objectives can also be achieved. Tom Hume makes a similar point.
Francois Daoust, the W3C Team Contact for this activity, in his post illustrating some of the issues in more detail and inviting public participation in the whole process. Andrea has started a forum on this topic - see http://mobiforge.com/forum/developing/device-detection/content-transformation-guidelines-or-rules-responsible-reformattin. As I say, this is a complex area and calling people names doesn't solve any problems. On the other hand working together patiently will produce positive results.
Posted by Jo Rabin 4 years 8 weeks ago
CTO at dotMobi, co-Chair of the W3C Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group, co-Organiser of MobileMonday London.
Posted by srowen 4 years ago
Again Luca has sabotaged his own reasonably good ideas by dressing them in a bizarre mantle of martyrdom and rhetoric. Really, this is just the web, not a civil rights struggle.
Yes, for Google, not transcoding web pages is simply not an option. This cuts off too much information from the world's mobile web users. I imagine Google is not special in this regard.
There are already functioning standards-based solutions out there, like those noted by the task force, and already supported by Google's transcoder and others. It would be more worthwhile for the manifesto-writers of the world to point out what content providers can do to fix this problem for themselves today. +1 to practical suggestions like this that help real developers solve real problems; -1 to manifestoes that suggest non-solutions and try to create controversy from nothing.
Posted by jonarne 4 years ago
Just want to comment on what you say about helping content providers fixing the problems themselves.
"It would be more worthwhile for the manifesto-writers of the world to point out what content providers can do to fix this problem for themselves today."
The problem is that some transcoders does not allow the problems to be fixed by any known means. Hence, rules are needed.
Btw. if all transcoders behaved like Google, we would probably not be having this level of engagement regarding transcoding :)
--
Jon Arne S.
Posted by c64audio 4 years ago
Sean, I guess it's much easier to play the man, not the ball, especially when the man speaks for a number of quieter, yet still very concerned developers who have experienced the sharp end of arrogant and one-sided corporate behaviour informed by nothing but the prospect of profit.
People sitting around patiently waiting for standards will not stop corporations now engaging in immediate dubious sales practices, or ad hominem attacks such as yours. Sometimes someone has to stand up and say "hold on a minute: the situation at the moment is actually a lot worse than everyone is pretending, and some people are just not being honest!". Otherwise everyone gets complacent and self-serving, at the expense of all of us poor schmoes at the sharp end. It's also a cheap shot to say "boo hoo, they offer no solutions". They didn't create the problem, so it's unreasonable to expect someone else to solve it: it's up to transcoder developers to do that, as part of the responsibility they bear to the community.
Initially when this blew up, I thought "OK, I'll just cope with it, it's no big deal", but then when I heard about the way that transcoders are being marketed and sold to telcos, I became glad that Luca put his head over the parapet. It's just a shame that I'm seeing such kneejerk condemnation of the ideas based on the way they're being expressed. Sometimes when the main motivator is money, the only defense is grassroots politics.
And yes, of course I have a vested interest too. We all do. That's why we're here.
Chris Abbott
DetectRight CTO
Posted by passani 4 years ago
Sean, it's really sad to observe how you have made attacking me your favorite hobby.
If I were you, I wouldn't be so extremely proud about what W3C has achieved. The initial spirit was certainly good, but the result, far from representing a solution to the problem, has only provided Novarra and others an excuse to claim that they support standards.
I still cannot believe my eyes that you are not seeing the threat that aggressively configured transcoders placed in the middle of each and every HTTP connection on an operator network represent to net-neutrality.
Yet, I would imagine that someone from Google knows better.
What would happen to Google's business model if everyone who creates a website had to go around and register with each known ISP on the planet? 90% drop in Google's revenue?
Can't you see what I am talking about? are you blind? or maybe you are just sticking to your corporate line, which prevents you from, heaven forbid, say something against operators in public? is Google really as open as they would like the world to believe?
Please stop attacking me and go do something useful for the community of developers you pay lip service to.
Luca
PS: Thank you for the support, Chris.
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