Making the mobile real Jose Luís Díaz , TI+D MyMobileWeb

Making the mobile real

Jose Luís Díaz, TI+DMyMobileWeb

Table of Contents• Introduction & Project Targets• MyMobileWeb

– Motivation– Functional View

• Key Technologies– Architectural View– Core Functionalities

• Impact and Achievements• Demonstration (demo video)• Roadmap

Valencia, 12 and 13 April 2010 NESSI Projects Summit

Introduction


Introduction• Making the Mobile Web a reality it is not

only a question of using enhanced devices and browsers

• Users are expecting more from the Mobile Web

• It is an Eureka-CELTIC (Call 4) project • Start Date: March 1st 2007• Finish Date: December 31st 2009


Project Targets• Making the Mobile Web a reality by accelerating the creation of

compelling applications and contents that automatically adapt to the Context of use (browser, device, network, location …), thus offering a harmonized user experience.

• How:– A language (IDEAL) for the declarative description of device independent

UIs– An open source, standards-based content & application adaptation

platform – Ontologies for modeling and reasoning about the Delivery Context – A Semantic Browsing Bar for content and service correlation plus smart

navigation– Contributing to the future standards for the Mobile Web

• Standards-Based Context-Aware Rich Mobile Web Applications


The Mobile Web – Overview (I)

• Accessing web applications and contents from mobile handsets

– From the old days of WAP to the Mobile Web (HTTP + (X)HTML + CSS + Javascript)

• Particularities of the mobile environment Delivery Context

– A myriad of devices and web browsers (multiple combinations)

– Different markup language varieties, image formats, CSS support

– Different form factors subject to orientation changes

– Different interaction resources (multi-touch, stylus, track ball, numeric keypad, …)

– Network latencies, disconnections…


The Mobile Web – Overview (II)

• Users use their mobiles to do different tasks

– Different Context of Use Mobile Applications and Portals optimized

• Mobile Web Development is not easy if you Mobile Web Development is not easy if you wish to support the majority of devices wish to support the majority of devices without compromising functionality or the without compromising functionality or the user experienceuser experience


The Mobile Web – Why?


3 Mb – 57 seg !3 Mb – 57 seg !

31 Kb – 2 seg31 Kb – 2 seg

28 Kb – 2 seg28 Kb – 2 seg

12,5 Kb – 1’7 seg12,5 Kb – 1’7 seg

Voice from the experts“Unless websites are redesigned for the special circumstances of

mobile use, the mobile Web will remain a mirage. Users won't realize the benefits promised by mobile vendors, and site owners won't reap the profits that would follow from gathering hordes of loyal mobile customers.”

“In user testing, website use on mobile devices got very low scores, especially when users accessed "full" sites that weren't designed for mobile.”

“So, if mobile use is important to your Internet strategy, it's smart to build a dedicated mobile site.”

Jakob Nielsen : Worldwide-recognized Usability Expert"the king of usability" (Internet Magazine) "the guru of Web page usability" (The New York Times)

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-usability.html


http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/07/cyber/articles/13usability.html

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-usability.html

MyMobileWeb


MyMobileWeb - Introduction• MyMobileWeb is an open source, standards-based software

framework that simplifies the rapid development of mobile web applications and portals.

• MyMobileWeb encompasses a set of technologies which enable the automatic adaptation of applications to the target Delivery Context (browser, device, network, location,…), thus offering a harmonized user experience.

• How:– Using an XML-Based language (IDEAL2), that makes it possible the description of

device independent user interfaces and their adaptation policies– Using a set of client and server-side runtime libraries that realize the automatic

content & application adaptation

• MyMobileWeb enables the creation of Mobile Web Applications that can adapt seamlessly to multiple devices with minimal effort from the developer


The Mobile Web – Realizing is potential• Making the Mobile Web a reality it is not only a

question of using highly capable devices and browsers• MyMobileWeb makes it possible what users are

expecting from the Mobile Web– Any application / service / portal adapted and optimized

for every device used at a given moment– Rich user interfaces enabling higher functionalities while

optimizing traffic costs: AJAX, Graphics, Maps– Context-Awareness : providing what I need, now, here …

• MyMobileWeb provides application and portal developers powerful technologies that enable the creation of advanced, high-quality mobile web applications in time to market without investing a lot of money– Using open and standard technologies– Without the need of highly specialized (and hard to find)

developers


MyMobileWeb - More than 5 years on the edge

• History

– Born on November 2004 as an internal innovation project at TI+D

– Released as open source (Morfeo) in November 2005

– From 2006 has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Industry

– In 2007 the project was labeled as Eureka-CELTIC

– Now it is a “Proyecto Singular y de Carácter Estratégico” (Avanza I+D)

• During the last 5 years MyMobileWeb has made outstanding contributions to the state of the art in the area of the mobile web

– MyMobileWeb is a product in continuous development which has been adapting to the permanent changes in the mobile market


<!DOCTYPE ideal2> <ideal id="pslist" title=“SalesForce"> <ui> <body> <section id="mainSection"> <div class="center" id="p1"> <span>Company:</span> <output ref=“company“ /> </div> <div class="center vertical" id="p2"> <table id=“tbl" ref=“op" class="tps paginate"> <th class="header"> <td>Cod.</td> <td>Name</td> <td expr="dcn:deviceWidth() gt 240">Date</td> </th> <tr repeat-nodeset=“res“ value="${res.current.code}"> <td> <output ref="code" /> </td> <td> <output ref="name" /> </td> <td> <output ref="date" /> </td> </tr> </table> </div><include content="PSDetail/generic/product/p2" /> </section> </body> </ui> </ideal>

<!DOCTYPE ideal2> <ideal id="pslist" title=“SalesForce"> <ui> <body> <section id="mainSection"> <div class="center" id="p1"> <span>Company:</span> <output ref=“company“ /> </div> <div class="center vertical" id="p2"> <table id=“tbl" ref=“op" class="tps paginate"> <th class="header"> <td>Cod.</td> <td>Name</td> <td expr="dcn:deviceWidth() gt 240">Date</td> </th> <tr repeat-nodeset=“res“ value="${res.current.code}"> <td> <output ref="code" /> </td> <td> <output ref="name" /> </td> <td> <output ref="date" /> </td> </tr> </table> </div><include content="PSDetail/generic/product/p2" /> </section> </body> </ui> </ideal>

MyMobileWeb in 4 steps


Authoring

Deployment

User Experience in different Delivery Contexts

MyMobileWeb Functional View


MyMobileWeb – Key Technologies

• IDEAL2 (Interface Description Authoring Language, version 2) , for the declarative description of device-independent user interfaces and adaptation policies.

• SCXML, language for describing application flows modeled as state machines.

• “Device Description Framework” concerned with obtaining information about the characteristics of devices and web browsers by interfacing with different Device Description Repositories (DDRs).

• “Adaptation and Rendering Engine”, in charge of selecting and generating the final markup, script, style sheets and other resources (images, audio, video) to be delivered to the mobile device.

• “Client-side Framework” (a.k.a. “Mobile AJAX Framework”) which enables rich interactions in different Javascript-enabled browsers.


http://files.morfeo-project.org/mymobileweb/public/specs/ideal2/

http://www.w3.org/TR/scxml/


Content Management

System

Designer

IDEAL2 & SCXML

BusinessServices

Semantics

AJAX Fwk

Client XForms Engine

HTTP

Mobile Web Browser

Deployment

Mobile UI Design

Content Edition and Annotation

Contents

Eclipse

Java Servlet Container

Development Environment

Backen

d

Client Fwk

Adaptation and Rendering Engine

SCXML EngineClient

Controller

Server Platform

Delivery Context Manager

Mobile Device

Web Server

DDR Service

OMA-STI Transcoder

Connectors

ServerXForms Engine

Delivery Context Manager

ConnectorsConnectors

Controller

AJAX UI Components

HT

TP SOAP

Appl. Logic

Appl.Logic

Appl. Logic

HTTP

MyMobileWeb Architectural View

MyMobileWeb – Core Functionalities (I)

• Main Feature: “content and application adaptation”.

• Adaptation is a process of selection and generation of the application’s user interface or contents in order to:

(a) accommodate to the restrictions imposed by the target delivery context

(b) to ensure that the resulting user experience is sufficiently harmonized with such a delivery context. Adaptation encompasses a number of sub-functionalities


MyMobileWeb – Sub-Functionalities• Automatic generation of the most suitable markup, style sheets and Javascript to realize

the different user interface elements (specified using IDEAL2). – from legacy (WML [16]) to the most modern (WebKit-based) enhanced browsers

• selection of CSS style-sheets to customize the look-and-feel or layout for different devices.

• selection of user interface parts (including Javascript code), using W3C’s DISelect 1.

• pagination of long content such as tables with many rows, menus with many options or forms with many fields.

• selection or transcoding of different multimedia content (images, audio, video). While selection consists of choosing the best from a set of variants, transcoding implies a transformation process from a source to a target resource.

– MyMobileWeb incorporates a simple image transcoding component and can interoperate with any OMA-STI compliant transcoding service, such as the open source Alembik system.

• internationalization and literal management which consists of selecting literals depending on the delivery context (for example to accommodate a short space by choosing an acronym) or the user preferences (preferred language).


MyMobileWeb – Core Functionalities (II)• Runtime support for a wide variety of user interface

components and statistical graphics– input (including automatic completion), date, time, selection, menus,

chained menu, table, list, range, placard (for combining text and images), carrousel (for showing sequentially a list of items) . . .

• Data and content binding. (declarative) association of user interface components with the data or contents (and possibly their constraints) they are going to display or manipulate.– MyMobileWeb can interoperate with any JSR-170-compliant content

repository, such as Alfresco.

• Awareness of the delivery context, compliant with the DDR Simple API W3C Recommendation.

• IDEAL2 incorporates an extension which allows to add semantic annotations to user interface descriptions. One possible application of this feature is the automatic completion of forms.


IDEAL 2• IDEAL2 is the result of four years of research and experience in

authoring languages for the description of device-independent user interfaces.

• Features– Based on W3C standards (namely XForms 1.1, DISelect 1)– Modular and extensible. – To help web authors, the syntax of IDEAL2 is similar to XHTML’s but as an

authoring language, it incorporates abstractions and extensionsdescribes user interfaces (UIs) in an abstract manner, i.e. without commitment on how such a UI will be finally rendered.

• IDEAL2 is only intended to provide the description of a user interface from a structural and behavioural point of view. All the aspects that have to do with look-and-feel and layout are specified by means of CSS2 and extensions.

• By using IDEAL2 developers can concentrate on the application functionality without worrying about markup languages or scripting capabilities.


Device Description Framework• MyMobileWeb’s DDR Service provides information about the “a

priori known”, i.e. static, characteristics of a delivery context. – For instance, the display width of a device when it is in its default

orientation.

• MyMobileWeb is able to connect to any DDR supporting the W3C’s DDR Simple API Recommendation. – Connectors with the most popular DDRs such as WURFL, Device

Atlas or UAProf are provided off-the-shelf. – Multiple vocabularies of properties, including the W3C’s DDR Core

Vocabulary and the WURFL’s vocabulary are supported

• MyMobileWeb implements an AJAX-based mechanism devoted to notify the server when a (dynamic) property changes at client (device) side during a session. – For example the screen orientation


Mobile AJAX Framework


Delivery ContextDelivery Context

DCCI

FormsForms

XFormsEngine

Form Autocompletion

CoreCore

AJAX

Commons (DOM

Manipulation)

UIControls

Debug

SCXML

• State Chart XML (SCXML) is a W3C standard – General purpose language for describing state

machines (based on Harel States Tables)– Used to specify MyMobileWeb’s application flows

• Application Flows describe the behavior to be performed in reaction to the interaction of the user with the system. – The set of actions to be performed by an

application flow does not only depend on the events raised by the user interface but also on the application state.


Impact & Achievements


Impact Summary• at least 20 applications (in production or at development stage)

using the MyMobileWeb platform– Applications we know about them. There might be others.

• 90 developers have approached to the product on the mailing list– (from all around the world)

• More than 40 developers already certified in Spain• More than 10.700 downloads at the time of writing with an

average of 276 a month• an average of 42,5 posts a month and 15 questions on the

support mailing list• around 1000 visitors (average) per month on the web site• more than 10 additional research and innovation project

proposals incubated• outstanding contributions to different W3C standards for the

Mobile Web


MyMobileWeb on the net


MyMobileWeb’s Popularity in relative terms


MyMobileWeb downloads per month


31/0

7/07

31/0

1/08

31/0

7/08

31/0

1/09

31/0

7/09

31/1

2/09

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

190

364

329

175 171

317 321311

143 150132

366

134

267

391

162

241

169 162

232

138

262 260

295

470483

361

188

235245

320

345

425

640

366

328 333

dow nloads

M o n t h

Dow

nloa

ds

Average: 281.6 per month / Total: 11814, 29th March 2010 (Last 39 months)

MyMobileWeb mailing list traffic per month


Average: 16 questions per month / Average: 46.2 posts per month(Last 39 months )

Average: 16 questions per month / Average: 46.2 posts per month(Last 39 months )

31/0

7/07

31/0

1/08

31/0

7/08

31/0

1/09

31/0

7/09

31/1

2/09

0

50

100

150

200

250

11 13 1017

34

12

37

13

2328

10

2417

51

26

8

19

106

3226

35

20

69

23 2226

105

123

85

101

45

132

233

132

77

55

5 37 9

14

6

147 9 9

510

5

19 18

1

106 4

2014

20

8

33

8 10 10

22

34

23

35

19

37

55

pos ts

ques tions

M o n t h

Mes

sage

Cou

nt

MyMobileWeb’s contribution to standards (I)

• Mobile Web Best Practices. This W3C Recommendation specifies Best Practices for delivering Web content to mobile devices. The principal objective is to improve the user experience of the Web when accessed from such devices. http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-mobile-bp-20080729/

– MyMobileWeb contributed to this Recommendation with several best practices.

– MyMobileWeb is a mobileOK compliant framework http://www.w3.org/2008/06/mobileok-implementation-report

• Mobile Web Applications Best Practices. This is work in progress. It specifies Best Practices for the development and delivery of Web applications on mobile devices. The recommendations expand upon statements made in the Mobile Web Best Practices (BP1), especially those that relate to the exploitation of device capabilities and awareness of the delivery context. http://www.w3.org/TR/mwabp/

– The MyMobileWeb team has made important contributions to this specification, particularly those related with the optimization of Javascript and DOM operations in order to save bandwidth or battery life.


MyMobileWeb’s contribution to standards (II)• DDR Simple API. A W3C Recommendation that describes a minimal API for

retrieving device properties needed for content & application adaptation. http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-DDR-Simple-API-20081205/.

– The MyMobileWeb team leaded the edition of the standard. MyMobileWeb developed and integrated the first open source implementation of the specification. See http://www.w3.org/2005/MWI/DDWG/drafts/api/test-report.html

• DDR Core Vocabulary. A W3C Note describing an essential vocabulary of properties for adaptation in the Mobile Web environment. http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/NOTE-ddr-core-vocabulary-20080414/

– MyMobileWeb contributed to such a vocabulary with different properties that resulted from our experience on the field.

• Delivery Context Ontology. The Delivery Context Ontology provides a formal model of the characteristics of the environment in which devices interact with the Web or other services. The Delivery Context includes the characteristics of the Device, the software used to access the service and the Network providing the connection among others. http://www.w3.org/TR/dcontology/

– The MyMobileWeb team participated and contributed in a decisive manner to such an API. Mr José M. Cantera, leader of MyMobileWeb, is the main editor of the document.


Demonstration


VideoDemo video (8:11)… Short video (1:15)…


Roadmap


Next Steps (1/2)• Evolve the AJAX framework and the UI

components (media and maps controls, …)• Framework for offline applications compliant

with the HTML5 offline capabilities• Declarative development of context-aware

mobile apps while respecting privacy and security policies

• Compliant with W3C DAP / OMTP-Specifications • Enabling the development of Adaptive Mobile

Widgets


Next Steps (2/2)• To promote MyMobileWeb technologies as open

standards– W3C MBUI XG on “Model-Based User Interface”– Workshop on Future Standards for Model-Based User

Interfaces 12-13 May. Rome• http://www.w3.org/2010/02/mbui/cfp.html

• To identify further research challenges and research projects– Serenoa FP7 ICT Call5 SERENOA Proposal

• Multi-Dimensional Context-Aware Adaptation of Service Front-Ends

– UsiXML ITEA2 Call 5 Project• User interface eXtensible Markup Language


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Making the mobile real Jose Luís Díaz , TI+D MyMobileWeb