W3C Mobile Web Best Practices
I recently came across the September 2005 draft of the W3C Mobile Web Best Practices. The key concepts are "One Web" and "MobileOK".
"One Web" champions the idea that sites should not be created "just for mobile" or "just for the desktop". Instead, one URI should be used to allow access to the same information from different device types. An "Adaption Layer" can be used to fit the information onto the device in the appropriate way. It’s also for this reason, Tim Berners-Lee and the W3C didn’t like the new .mobi domain extension. Despite this, some leading content adaption companies back .mobi.
"Mobile OK" will imply that a site will render OK on a mobile device. The details have yet to be fleshed out but will involve conformance tests of some sort.
In practice, I would say the most used mobile sites are not currently "One Web". For example, mobile network operator portals aren’t available off the mobile phone. I agree it would be great if all normal web sites could be viewed easily from a mobile. However, starting with a normal site and seeing how it can fit on a mobile nearly always leads to a compromised mobile user experience. It’s often better to think what (and how) to present on the phone and then later allow access from fixed users, even if this means allowing access to the ‘mobile’ site.
I can see "MobileOK" becoming a bit meaningless. There’s a diversity of mobile operating systems, phones, firmware versions, browsers, tariffs (yes, tariffs!) and even network operator proxy servers. These are more likely to affect the ability to read a site than the actual html markup. There’s no way you can guarantee a site will render correctly. In fact, what does ‘render correctly’ actually mean? All that can be done is to say that a site renders correctly with a specific setup or that a site is ‘likely to render OK’. "MobileOK" next to a mobile site is probably just a meaningful as saying "Here’s a mobile accessible site".