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Handhelds The Internet Hardware

mTLD to enforce Web standards in .mobi 152

Posted by Hemos from the can-it-be-done dept.
Zoxed writes "Builder.com reports that mTLD will force anyone wishing to register in .mobi will require its customers to stick to rules on how their users' Web sites are developed. Assuming this can/will be policed are there any *disadvantages* to the approach ? Could it be enforced in other TLDs ?" That is the real question: How and what effect would be done? And how sterile would an environment like that be?
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mTLD to enforce Web standards in .mobi

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  • What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lpangelrob ( 714473 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @10:52AM (#13915374)
    Why not just let the domain regulate itself?

    If I go to a .mobi domain in my cell phone browser and it looks like crap, I won't go back. The website doesn't get any traffic. The company fixes it.

    This isn't even bringing up the philisophical arguments of why this is a bad idea...

    • If a site isn't phone-broswer friendly, people will not return. No need to inject a layer of "regulation" (whatever that means) into the mix.

      • Re:Agreed. Let the viewers decide with their "hits (Score:4, Interesting)

        by BlogPope ( 886961 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @11:32AM (#13915697)
        If a site isn't phone-broswer friendly, people will not return.

        And the "Land Rush" of idiots who camp on every possibly useful domain name? Part of the reason the nets a mess now is because its so cheap and easy to register domains now.

        • Part of the reason the nets a mess now is because its so cheap and easy to register domains now.

          It's also why it's so successful, and why I and others can have my/our own domain name without it being a luxery. Though I understand some TLDs may be more expensive (e.g, .mobi) or restricted (e.g, .museum), it is important that having a domain under the main gTLDs (ie: .com, .net & .org) remain cheap.

          I can ignore crap, but I would miss all the great things the web has provided thanks to the low cost
        • You mistakenly describe the spamming of DNS as the work of idiots. It's not individuals as you suggest, the same trolls who post offense on newsgroups, write viruses etc. It's the work of SpamCorp, out to profit by corrupting the system to the extent that less than a single perfect of addresses are 'real'. No troll could commit this amount of damage, only a mighty organised power of evil.

          Individuals are in fact the greatest contributors to the net, creating unique content, bringing innovative ideas and abov
      • Yes, and in the meantime I've spent $10 downloading their 1MB image-heavy piece of garbage webpage on my phone thinking it was actually a site usable on my phone because it had a '.mobi' domain.

        Not only will I be not returning to that website, I will be cancelling my phone's data plan.

        They want to prevent this from happening. I completely understand why.
    • Yea I agree, though I wish, on some level, there was a way to enforce standards.

      The reality of it is, when the TLDs start trying to enforce standards they're not going to limit themselves to XHTML or whatever, they're going to try and mandate within the existing standards, and it's going to become a nightmare of buerocracy and inefficiency.

      In the end, it all comes down to the browsers anyway...Whatever looks best on your browser of choice is going to be "best designed" as far as you're concerned, and this i
      • At first, I agreed with you. But thinking a bit more thouroughly, I came to another idea. One of the principles of the Web is that it is composed of very simple components which work great together. A webserver isn't doing much: it understands HTTP (a protocol that has nothing to do with contents, except replying their type), then delivers the requested contents.

        Who is to decide the standard under which the contents are? Is it the W3C? I don't think so. First, the W3C only issues recommandations. I am an

    • Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Narcissus ( 310552 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @10:59AM (#13915425) Homepage
      The problem I see is that all that will end up happening, then, is that all forms of people will start creating sites in .mobi that aren't for consumption through a mobile phone.

      Hundreds of ringtone sites will pop up overnight, but only a few will actually be for use through a phone. Every other one will just be like all the ones we have now.

      Then you'll have phone manufacturers setting sites there and so on, and then soon the .mobi name loses its meaning and more importantly, value for sites that are actually developed for the original target market.

      That would be my guess, anyway.
      • The problem I see is that all that will end up happening, then, is that all forms of people will start creating sites in .mobi that aren't for consumption through a mobile phone.

        I think this is a pretty important concern. There's no point in creating a special purpose domain set if any corporation or any entrepeneur can jump in and defeats its purpose right away.

        This seems to happen a lot when a niche development goes mainstream, the companies and people that take it mainstream don't understand it and make
    • Imagine the market share of your browser being 1% and a mix of browsers that do work correctly in the 90+%. I can imagine a company not caring about that 1%, they have already lost the sale so why spend money to fix the problem!
    • I think the first question would be ... what happens if your site is deemed "non-compliant".

      If they do nothing, then this is all useless banter anyway.

      If they do block non-compliant sites then I can see them having a lot of court battles on their hands.

      Big time stupid move whichever approach they take.
      • If they do block non-compliant sites then I can see them having a lot of court battles on their hands.

        Not if you agreed to abide by standards when you registered the name. Of course, this is assuming that they have a specific plan with solid guidelines in place before .mobi goes live, and spell that out in detail to prospective buyers.
      • I think the first question would be ... what happens if your site is deemed "non-compliant".

        I would imagine you would receive a notice to correct the problem. After 6 months and 9 gentle reminders, you forfeit the domain. Of course if you whine that you are trying, etc. you'll be able to buy more time.

        If they do block non-compliant sites then I can see them having a lot of court battles on their hands.

        It would fall under contract law, and a simple clause requiring arbitration would keep almost everyth

    • Re:What's the point? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @11:23AM (#13915620) Journal
      This isn't even bringing up the philisophical arguments of why this is a bad idea...

      It's not about censorship of content or layouts, but about making sites work with phones.

      If not, they can make a website in .mobi that:

      1) is not even intended to work with a phone -- do we want that for a special domain like this?

      2) works with special brands of phones with special "web standard extensions". Imagine a Microsoft Smartphone with these under a snazzy name like MSX and companies starts hosting .msx documents instead because it's the Flash of mobiles. A lot of companies catches on because it's flashy and cool, and now you have the regular web but on handhelds.

      • Re:What's the point? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by ezzzD55J ( 697465 )
        1) is not even intended to work with a phone -- do we want that for a special domain like this?

        Sure, why not?

        2) works with special brands of phones with special "web standard extensions". Imagine a Microsoft Smartphone with these under a snazzy name like MSX and companies starts hosting .msx documents instead because it's the Flash of mobiles. A lot of companies catches on because it's flashy and cool, and now you have the regular web but on handhelds.

        That would suck, but using 'force' to prevent

    • Re:What's the point? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Bert64 ( 520050 ) <.moc.eeznerif.todhsals. .ta. .treb.> on Monday October 31, 2005 @11:34AM (#13915720) Homepage
      Because if a large number of people use phone X which renders it`s own proprietary markup that`s incompatible with any other phone, then sites will pop up that use it.. Leaving those of you using phone Y screwed. Then as a result, people will think that phone Y is crap, and phone X will become more popular even if it`s a massively inferior device.
      • Because if a large number of people use phone X which renders it`s own proprietary markup that`s incompatible with any other phone, then sites will pop up that use it.. Leaving those of you using phone Y screwed. Then as a result, people will think that phone Y is crap, and phone X will become more popular even if it`s a massively inferior device.

        You mean like IE or Microsoft's Java implementation?

    • Re:What's the point? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @11:44AM (#13915808)

      Why not just let the domain regulate itself? If I go to a .mobi domain in my cell phone browser and it looks like crap, I won't go back. The website doesn't get any traffic. The company fixes it.

      First, they are trying to add value to their domain. If users learn that sites on that domain always work with all their mobile devices they will prefer it, which will make sites there more attractive, which will lead to more value for the owners. Second, letting the free market decide works great if you have a free market. As it is, however, you have minor interference from a swarm of governments and one huge monopoly trying to embrace and control said market. MS would like nothing better than to control the mobile OS space, and thus the internet for mobile users. They have the cash to strategically break service for 20% of users in the interest of gaining long term control and profits. This is not in the best interests of the domain owners and will reduce the value of the domain. Basically, I see this as a shrewd move assuming they can pull it off and one that favors end users.

    • Well, I think the internet has done a shitty job of regulating itself so far, specifically wrt the browser wars and the overwhelming dependence on Internet Explorer's busted handling of *HTML.

      The web is also about interoperability, isn't it? Microsoft has done a good job trying to keep that buttoned down so far, and has subsequently made my life as a web developer miserable (judging from the complaints from other web developers, their lives are similarly unneccessarily complicated). Deliberately breaking

    • I think the real "what's the point?" question is, will they bother to enforce standards on irc.blah.mobi?

      How about on ftp.blah.mobi, or mail.blah.mobi? Wish I could bitchslap the fools.
    • If I go to a .mobi domain in my cell phone browser and it looks like crap, I won't go back. The website doesn't get any traffic. The company fixes it.

      But not all phones use the same browser. What if a browser that does not display the site the same as others becomes the market leader because the phone brand it is tied to gains market share? The other phones may lose business as sites are written to display best in that browser. Then other phone brands either must adopt that browser or emulate it's rendering

  • let the market decide! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by yagu ( 721525 ) * <yayagu@gmailDALI.com minus painter> on Monday October 31, 2005 @10:53AM (#13915387) Journal

    One of the fundamental underpinnings of the internet is its openness. That's not exact terminology but describes the internet's zen. Creating .mobi for specific use makes sense, the mobile world is almost ready for that. Establishing strict guidelines helps define a consistent (and predictable) mobile web experience, but strict policy flies in the internet zen's face.

    Give designers free reign, let them create, let them innovate. Extend the freedom and define the extension as mobile friendly, but don't define what mobile friendly is to the web site creators.

    As in the other TLD worlds, creativity has served to enhance and extend the web experience beyond many's expectations. .mobi should be no different, and constraining .mobi with policy weakens its potential. Let the free market and competing ideas dictate the policy.

    The mobile user community will vote with their smart-text pads as to what is the most effective web site.

    Also, there are unknown (now) reasons to create any kind of web site presence in .mobi.

    Let the market decide!

    • Look at the normal internet. All those stupid IE-only pages that are incompatible because of ignorant people deciding everyone has IE. By allowing only standards compliant material you avoid browser-specific sites and prevent browser companies from fragmenting the market. Since the mobile browsers are still developing and cross-platform compatibility on mobiles is difficult it makes sense to enforce the standards and allow browser writers to implement only the standards without stupid failsafe code that's n

    • Oh, of course... 'the market'... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Traegorn ( 856071 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @11:25AM (#13915638) Homepage Journal
      Because we all know how well the market has adhered to the suggested rules on .com, .org, and .net...

      And all the .tv addresses are clearly hosted in Tuvalu.

      Self policing has failed.

    • Follow some basic rules! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by lilmouse ( 310335 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @11:31AM (#13915689)
      Think of .mobi as .com.moderated. If you want to create a wacky, flash-based website that lots of people can't view anyway, and that certainly won't run on half the mobile-phones, well, then .com is for you! If you're going to create a .mobi site, then you're going to have to follow some rules. Within those rules, you can do anything you want.

      "Free market" is why we have a monopoly that can flex its muscles and push alternate technologies out of the marketplace. "Free market" means you can't compete on an even basis, because the dominant player already has locked you out of the markets with supplier agreements. It also means that the W3C standards get ignored by the majority of websites out there, and there is no longer an even playing field - alternate browsers that conform to the standards better do not display as well.

      Part of the problem is that mobile-users don't have sufficient information to use the best webpages. They won't vote based on which is the most effective; they'll vote on which is the most well advertised, hyped up, etc, or they'll end up forced to use a site because they've already paid for access to a different format (e.g., a banking website - they might choose their bank because it has free checking, but then be stuck with a sucky .mobi site).

      Part of the problem is that chaotic innovation can give users plenty of choice in the short term, but in the long term, sites don't work clearly anymore, there are no standards, the standards that are there are proprietary and only known to one company, etc.

      This is an attempt to make sure that one company (no names mentioned) can dictate the format of the webpages available for mobiles devices, and no company can dictate what mobile devices can access .mobi pages. I'm glad to see this, and will be curious to see how the pages look. Hopefully, we'll avoid another standards debacle, and hopefully, mobiles devices today will still be able to view pages 3 years from now.

      --LWM
    • We already know what it will look like if domain owners are given free reign - we might as well drop the registrar and just do a zone transfer from .com...

      Anybody with a .com/net/whatever site will just register the corresponding .mobi domain and point it at their regular webserver. Viola, the mobile migration is over, and mobile users still won't be able to find sites to go to...

      If you want to drive mobile sites you should not only restrict content to certain standards, but you should also revoke ownershi
    • When you put up a non-compliant .mobi site, you do more than just create a site people don't wish to visit. You also cast doubt on any other .mobi site.

      The goal of .mobi is to create a whole set of sites that you can trust them to work on your mobile device, and people will comfortably go there rather than the .com equivalent, with which people are already reasonably comfortable. If .mobi has a meaning at all, it's only to ensure that comfort. Otherwise it's just a way for registrars to get more money ou
    • As in the other TLD worlds, creativity has served to enhance and extend the web experience beyond many's expectations. .mobi should be no different, and constraining .mobi with policy weakens its potential. Let the free market and competing ideas dictate the policy.

      What about .gov and .edu?

      Those TLDs aren't market solutions. Remember regulation is always a market solution because the market has choose (or is willing) to let it be regulated.

      Although, I've always wanted my own government agency webpag

  • TLD? (Score:2, Informative)

    by b100dian ( 771163 )
    you mean Exteded TLD, right?

    • Re:TLD? (Score:3, Informative)

      by m50d ( 797211 )
      you mean Exteded TLD, right?

      No he doesn't, not only is there no such word as "Exteded", but TLD stands for "Top Level Domain", which .mobi certainly is. Try again.

    • TLD is Top Level Domain, regardless of if it's country or not.

  • What about outdated/old technology? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @10:55AM (#13915395)
    mTLD announced today that it has joined the W3C and will be using many of the consortium's best practices, developed for the mobile Internet, to develop its own criteria in order to ensure .mobi sites are optimised to be viewed on mobile devices.

    Why wouldn't the market determine the criteria? What if the criteria that mTLD comes up with is outdated or improper? I have written a simple web application that is mobile friendly for WAP and regular browsers but I would assume that WAP is going to be left behind for proxied content or full support browsers.

    Why would you want to force compliance of crappy or unused technology on an entire TLD?
    • As said above, otherwise nothing is stopping people from putting normal websites on .mobi and mobile users won't be sure whether a .mobi page is actually compatible with mobile phones or just some idiot looking for a new domain to put his porn site/goatse redirector/blog onto.
      • As said above, otherwise nothing is stopping people from putting normal websites on .mobi and mobile users won't be sure whether a .mobi page is actually compatible with mobile phones or just some idiot looking for a new domain to put his porn site/goatse redirector/blog onto.

        As also said elsewhere, it's not up to the TLD to police the format of the sites. It's up to the market to decide whether or not a particular website succeeds or fails.

        With *so* many different methods to browse via a mobile device (pr

        • Re:What about outdated/old technology? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @11:55AM (#13915936) Journal
          Most people on mobile 'phones are paying a lot for bandwidth. I pay something like £1/MB. If I go to a site and it doesn't display on my device, then it may have cost 10p or so for nothing. Do this a few times, and it works out to be a lot. This way, I know that any site with a .mobi domain will work with any standards-compliant device. Any other site is still a lottery, but at least I can be sure of some sites.
          • I pay something like £1/MB. If I go to a site and it doesn't display on my device, then it may have cost 10p or so for nothing.

            Try browsing via wap.google.com. It converts webpages to mobile-friendly format on the fly, does a pretty decent job of it, and breaks them down into short chunks so that if, on reading the first one, you realise the page won't be useful, then you haven't wasted your money downloading all 200k of it...

    • Why wouldn't the market determine the criteria?

      Because a major player in said market is a monopoly that has a history of abusing that monopoly and of intentionally breaking standards, web standards, in order to illegally extend that monopoly?

      Why would you want to force compliance of crappy or unused technology on an entire TLD?

      Who is to say what is crappy and what is not? They are enforcing standards, not technology per se. This makes the sites universally readable by anyone who obeys standards and

    • Why wouldn't the market determine the criteria?
      Because the market has already failed miserably in other TLDs. Every time I see another website which does not render properly in neither Opera nor Firefox, I think that standards should really be more than just recommendations. It sure would make my life easier.

  • URL inspectors (Score:5, Interesting)

    by isa-kuruption ( 317695 ) <.ten.noitpuruk. .ta. .noitpuruk.> on Monday October 31, 2005 @10:55AM (#13915399) Homepage
    URL inspectors are pretty common, specifically the w3c validator for HTML/CSS. So why not for .mobi extensions? Some application can dump all the .mobi domain names, query them all and run a validator, send warning emails to admins... and eventually, cut their domain off of the network.

    Can this be enforced for other domains? Sure. Will it? Unlikely. Since the intent of .mobi is for mobile-based web browsers, it kind of makes sense that it would be restricted. However, some standard domain names (like .com) may not even have web addresses, maybe only email.

    • mobiletester (Score:2, Informative)

      by geo.georgi ( 809888 )
      I have written one such application.
      Basically, you give URL and choose the devices you want to test.
      It will make http request with the device user-agent and analyze the content, according to the features supported from the device.
      Shameless plug here [mobiletester.com]

      I don't see how the validation will be enforced. Many content providers offer (slightly) different version of the content for different devices. (example big screen phones will have the content on one page, for smaller screens the content will be divided i

  • .m (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jpx7777 ( 887044 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @10:56AM (#13915404)
    It would have been nice if they had made this .m instead of .mobi, just for the sake of if your on a mobile device it would be nice to type less, but I guess my next phone with have a qwerty keyboard on it anyway...
    • Nah, your next phone will have voice recognition. It's just around the corner...
      • I hope its better than my local electric/gas company's voice recognition. -What can I help you with?

        "Pay Bill"

        -I'm sorry?

        "PAY BILL"

        -I'm sorry, I'm having some trouble understanding, would you like to speak to a representative?

        "YES"

        -Thank you for calling *click*

  • Do they really have the kind of manpower that would be required to keep checking sites over and over if this TLD gets any kind of popularity? Seems like a really dumb idea.
    • Have you even heard of programming? Its pretty simple to write a program to verify a documented structure. It is basically a bunch of case statements and parsers, which is no different then any high level software language compiler (in other words that piece of software that changes your code into machine code).
      • Actually I think he has a point. Think of trying to do this over the, say, .com list of domains. It'd be a HUGE list, it'd take gobs of bandwidth and computer resources, and think that you'd have to keep running these checks regularly because webpages are constantly updated. Those systems aren't going to maintain themselves. If .mobi proves to be popular enough, it would indeed require a good chunk of resources, including manpower, to keep the sites in check. But I don't think there's much to worry just now
    • Virtually no manpower. The only manpower needed will be to delete the DNS entries of those who are out of compliance.

      HTML/XHTML validators already exist. A simple script that periodically validates all sites, and automatically emails the technical contact for any out of compliance site is needed - and eventually tells the .mobi administrators if it remains out of compliance outside of a given period. Or perhaps automatically drops the DNS entries for the domain.

  • Kick ass. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Audigy ( 552883 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @10:57AM (#13915411) Homepage Journal
    As an owner of a Treo 650, I am sick and tired of going to any website (ahem, slashdot) that takes 2-3 minutes to load... and then after it loads, renders the text like
    t
    h
    i
    s.

    I look forward to a more mobile-friendly chunk of the Internet, and this is definitely a step in the right direction.
    • As an owner of a Treo 650, I am sick and tired of going to any website (ahem, slashdot) that takes 2-3 minutes to load... and then after it loads, renders the text like: t h i s

      You know, Slashdot *used* to load just fine on my T-mobile sidekick with the settings I used on my desktop. Then they went to the new CSS site and now it loads poorly.

      I just wish there were options available on all sites to allow you to have it display the way you want (i.e. mobile).

      Taco, I know you had/have a Sidekick. Enable the
      • Why don't you load the RSS and/or Slashdot Light ?
        • Because it loaded and looked just fine (identical to what I was used to) prior to the CSS overhaul. I don't want to change the look and feel of how I browse every day so that I am able to read Slashdot on the road.

          Make it an option to disable CSS.
          • Wouldn't it be just as reasonable for Slashdot management to tell you to get a better phone ?

            Keeping up maintenance on the old slashcode takes time (and money). As does serving the pages which are larger than the new CSS-enabled pages. Would you be willing to pay them to do this and pay for the bandwidth costs involved ?
      • I know nothing about the device in question, so please feel free to ignore this post if it is not relevant:

        The new site requires you to first download an HTML document, then parse it, then download the CSS files, then render. The old site just required you to download, parse and render the HTML.

        Since mobile devices have a relatively high latency and a low bandwidth, this can take a while, since you can't correctly display the page until you have issued at least two not-very-overlapping HTTP requests. Yo

    • This won't have any effect on your problem since it only applies to the .mobi TLD and /. is not on that domain (although they may create a trimmed-down version explicitly for it, which would alleviate your problem with or without the forced compliance to standards). Besides, isn't it your problem if you try to view a feature-rich website in your cell phone? Should we make all websites display nicely on a 1.5 sq. inch screen? Obviously not. Companies that want to provide mobile-friendly versions of their

    • ...I want to know how Opera's mobile browser will change. For desktop browsers, a good chunk of space is devoted to error correction (rendering in quirks mode, trying to figure out improper nesting...The list goes on, yet people still do it.)

      But with a strict set of standards enforced, you don't need as much error correction, and I applaud that because cell phones are already limited on memory as is. I want to know if this will give phone web-browser makers like Opera more room to add features or just strea
    • As an owner of a Treo 650, I am sick and tired of going to any website (ahem, slashdot) that takes 2-3 minutes to load... and then after it loads, renders the text like
      t
      h
      i
      s.

      If you want to read Slashdot on your pda or phone then I don't believe there is currently any better way than by using Avantslash [fourteenminutes.com].

      However I do admit I am a little biased :)

  • I don't see that anybody should have a problem adhering to standards when putting their content online. Telling people to do low-level technical stuff properly is hardly going to stifle innovation... unless you believe that such 1997 tricks as using multiple <body> tags with different bgcolor attributes to create an irritating flashing of colours was somehow innovative, rather then just stupid.

    Pity those who try to use Front Page to create their mobile-friendly sites...

  • Headline mod for -1 flamebait (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 31, 2005 @10:57AM (#13915415)
    "....mobi will require its customers to stick to rules on how their users' Web sites are developed... how sterile would an environment like that be?"

    Probably real sterile, like, say CSS Zengarden, or some austere, clinical place like that.

    Standards have nothing to do with how cold or airless your design is. In fact, I would suggest that the best and most vibrant designers care about them more than anybody. The headline lacks this basic clue.

  • No disadvantages (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jiushao ( 898575 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @10:58AM (#13915419)
    One disadvantage I can think of is that it is none of their fucking business. They are not there to police the content.

    • Re:No disadvantages (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Xarius ( 691264 )
      Then don't fucking use them. No one is making you. And they can do what they like with their domains. If they don't like how you're using it, they can tell you to fucking go away.
      • Seems people have some problems with reading comprehension here so I will try to spell things out in small easily digested pieces:
        • The original post asks: "Assuming this can/will be policed are there any *disadvantages* to the approach?".
        • To which I reply roughly: "I think it is very real disadvantage if service providers decide to police things I do that are not directly related to the service they provide."

        Now given this I think you might also figure out that me not using them does not make the disadv

        • When you buy a .mobi domain, you're buying a booth at a tradeshow.

          In exchange for being promoted to a select group of people (mobile phone users), you are required to follow certain rules. If you don't like it, setup shop at another trade show (.com).
          • I'll make one more attempt.

            The choices A and B exists. A person asks me: "Do you see any problem with B?". I answer: "Yes, B has property X which is bad.", you argue: "But you can pick A instead, therefore there is nothing wrong with B.".

            The fact that I have other options is not in any way the point, the fact that they can require whatever they want is not the point either. I am stating in response to the original question that I consider them policing the content which is not directly related to the se

  • Corporate internet? (Score:4, Informative)

    by HishamMuhammad ( 553916 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @11:00AM (#13915438) Homepage Journal
    This seems to go against my favorite aspect of the internet: the fact that anyone, individual people, can publish whatever they want in it. Having any kind of organization controlling the "quality" of websites (even if only in structure/syntax and not content/semantics) means that things like geocities.mobi/user, mit.mobi/~student and something.sourceforge.mobi would be essentially impossible.

    An internet without this kind of content would be extremely different from what we've grown used to. Hemos hit the nail in the head, "sterile" indeed.
    • Complying with standards is not burdensome, it's good for business. Keep in mind that the .mobi USERS are paying by the minute to look at those domains ... it is the MOBI administration's best interest to make sure that the CUSTOMERS of the mobile phone companies are kept happy. If the .mobi domains become known for rendering badly or not at all, the consumers will stop using it.

      If the initial HTML is consistent and well-coded, it is possible to deliver a mobile phone version of it ... minus much of the

  • New 404? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by stuckinarut ( 891702 )
    Error 404

    The page you requested can not be displayed properly on your phone. Please contact the site administrator to advise them to change the content.

    • Re:New 404? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Bogtha ( 906264 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @12:03PM (#13916036)

      That's not a 404. 404s mean that the resource doesn't exist. An error code for what you describe already exists; 406 Not Acceptable. It means the resource exists, but not in a form acceptable to the client.

      Right now, the mobile web is an unfriendly place. You think the incompatibilities between normal web browsers is bad? Multiple that by a hundred, and then factor in the cost of buying the devices and maintaining service for them just so you can test in them.

      While forcing web authors to adhere to spec. is probably a good move, the incompatibilities of the clients people use is a much bigger problem.

  • The whole concept is flawed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by caudley ( 632164 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @11:02AM (#13915454)
    When the web was created, there was no need for a .www domain. Email doesn't run on the .smtp domain. If providers want to have a way to identify sites that are mobile content, why not just have a convention of using mobi.site.com (similar to www.site.com) and by convention mobile browsers can try mobi.site.com when the user types site.com (if site.com didn't return any usable content). Creating a whole new TLD and setting up body to monitor and police the content? Somebody got seriously bureaucracy happy.

  • It's gray, as usual (Score:3, Interesting)

    by k0de ( 619918 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @11:06AM (#13915476) Homepage
    It depends on how far they go. All TLDs currently have rules, even if not enforced. For example they must conform to some level of the HTML standards. This isn't 'policed' as much as your site can't generally be read if you don't have an open body tag.

    With that said, it may make more sense to let .mobi viewing devices govern what they will and will not view. This will become especially important as devices' screens grow in size, and the 'standards' need to grow to match. If mTLD poke their nose in this area, they better be very lax on their choice of restrictions.

    Then there's spyware. I won't complain at all if restrictions prevent spyware from making it's way to mobile devices. Again, however, maybe this is best left to the device.

  • This is so misguided (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MatD ( 895409 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @11:06AM (#13915485)
    This is so misguided. Viewing a web page in a mobile device will be drastically different from phone to phone to pda, to web ipod (just wait, it's coming). Web page developers are going to have to resort to large conditionals based on the device viewing the page, and invariably, it will require breaking 'standards' to get a page to view correctly in the latest and greatest mobile device.

    Plus, it's just kinda lame to force arbitrary rules on people.

    • If you even had the slightest clue, you'd realise the best way to get a website to display consistently, and degrade properly, across the board is to code tightly to standards.

      The degredation is key. If you design some slapstick javascript cack rife with tables it's going to look shit on everything except MSIE 5.7 (for example)

    • Re:This is so misguided (Score:4, Informative)

      by ptlis ( 772434 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @11:26AM (#13915642) Homepage
      You're entirely missing the point. The idea behind this is likely be specifically to avoid such horrible, unmaintainable conditional serving of webpages depending on the device that we saw in the late 90s. Stict HTML 4.01 should be viewable on any browser worth it's existance whereas non-standard propriatary elements will be by their very nature targetted at a single browser, thus requiring the very conditional serving of content that you seem so worried about.

      As for an arbratary rule, in this case I think the benefit of it's existance outweighs any percieved issues with it's existance.

  • The power of consistency (Score:3, Interesting)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @11:10AM (#13915512)
    Assuming that a TLD chooses standards that users like, they might be much more successful than other TLDs. A regulated TLD could be both more trustworthy (assuming some policing for good business practices, antivirus, etc.) and more useful (assuming the use of a pleasing, consistent look and feel).

    Requirements don't imply sterility as long as the the structure provides room for creativity. Are sonnets or haiku or limericks considered "sterile" because they have strict rules on structure?

  • This is what DNS is!!! (Score:3, Informative)

    by John.P.Jones ( 601028 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @11:11AM (#13915519)
    You see when an organization is permitted to manage any DNS domain it has sole authority over how to hand out and revoke names contained within that domain. The US government, having authority over .gov can do what it likes to it. The owners of this website own the domain slashdot.org and can adhere to whatever draconian standards they like.

    So society has just given .mobi to a group that will ensure that when they give out a sub-domain the recipient follows an agreement to publish a mobile friendly website on www.whatever.mobi.

    There is nothing groundbreaking or out of the ordinary about this.

  • ... a long time ago with HTML in general. Would have avoided a lot of nonsense on the web. Develop any browser or web enabled app you want, as long as it meets open specs of useability and access for the public internet.

  • Enforce all the TLDs? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Monoman ( 8745 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @11:18AM (#13915585) Homepage
    Wouldn't it be nice to see all of the TLDs enforced? Slashdot could be the first to go because they are sitting on a .org and are clearly a business.

    How about utilizing the country codes TLDs more effectively like some .com.tw and .co.uk we see quite often. DNS name space is *kinda* like IP space. Neither were designed to handle the size they have become. IPv6 may fix IP space someday but what do we do about the DNS name space?
  • If .net, .org, and .com only forced their users into using W3C validated xhtml/css and standard ecmascript I'd be a happy man. If they then subsequently broke the kneecaps of anyone writing a non-conformant user agent maybe web design wouldn't be the laborious, frustrating process that it is today. Sigh.

  • Could Be A Good Idea. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dasil003 ( 907363 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @11:30AM (#13915677) Homepage
    First of all, 80% of posts so far complain about openness and beareaucracy, etc, etc. Well I can see right off the bat that no one has tried to seriously develop a mobile website. If you're still designing your HTML pages with tables because of compatibility issues with floats and absolute positioning, then you have no clue how bad standards support on mobile devices is. Even devices from the same manufacturer vary radically in screen size and feature support. Plus there's no dominant device, market share is split between hundreds of them.

    Enforcing some standard on a domain name is a good thing because it will set a baseline for phone manufacturers, it doesn't make a lick of difference to web developers. You can always send a different version to their validation spider, and continue to serve up special versions for old phones if that's your mission. But given the impossibility of serious mobile development, I think cries for 'open markets' and 'content freedom' are coming from ignorance. Oh, you want the freedom to develop your site for a 10% market? Be my guest.

  • Oh yeah this could turn into a flame war (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @11:30AM (#13915681) Journal
    If today you wrote your ordinary webpage to the official standard you would have a page that would not display as you desire in any browser. NONE of the ones I know handle everything in css2 correctly.

    That is not even to count such differences as how to interpret a file, by its extension, its mimetype or its data content.

    It would have been nice if there had been an enforced standard, THIS is what HTML is and nothing else. It would have meant you could truly have been free to choose your own browser. It would also have meant that no browser would feel the need to pretend it is one of the better ones, yes IE I am talking to you.

    Mobile phones are not like PC's. First off the domination of MS is totally absent in the phone world. Opera actually has a browser share that can be measured in whole digits in the mobile phone market.

    It is also a lot harder to install another browser. Dual booting is not even to be thought of.

    On the the other hand what about freedom? What of the freedom of a webbrowser maker to add new and intresting features.

    All I can say is look at the wonderfull world of the PC internet. Can you imagine that a company involved with a "new" internet will want to avoid that? That perhaps they burnt with the failure of WAP want to avoid that whole chuncks of their new net are unavailble to users of platform X?

    Some cry, let the market decide but the market does not decide. Or is /. just a poor loser when it claims MS uses its IE dominance unfairly to dictate how the net should be?

    As a webbuilder I think that it would be kinda nice to be able to build a site just for once and not have to include any workarounds and bugfixes to support every single version of browser no matter how bugridden and insecure. Just once you know. WAP sites were bliss even with their horrible limitations. Just one way to do them and any syntax error caused the page to fail. Seperates the men from the boys.

  • So, what's a "web page"? Http port 80, html, ?? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by karl.auerbach ( 157250 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @11:34AM (#13915722) Homepage
    DNS does a whole lot more than provide paths to web pages. And web pages these days are a whole lot more than basic html.

    So I suspect that policing .mobi would be really hard to do. But it's their top level domain and they get to succeed or fail on their own merits.

    And I never understood why they didn't do this under a subdomain of an existing top level domain - there's absolutely no technical reason why .mobi is necessary to accompish what they want to do.

    The really stinky part about this is that ICANN has permitted so few to have top level domains that none of the rest of us who might want to try to run (and profit from) a top level domain have the opportunity to do so.
  • I do not want anyone to come to my site and tell me how to do things. If it does not work in a browser I am loosing sales/customers/reputation, whatever and it is my problem.

    If I choose to lock out everyone with a browser I do not like I have the right to do it, as I have the right to throw anyone out of e.g. my diner based on clothing, language, behaviour and sadly enough in some places nationality or race/skin colour.

    However I would govern public service sites : such as .gov, educational domains and even

  • Missing the point: fundamental flaws of .mobi (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Bungopolis ( 763083 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @11:46AM (#13915833)
    It is my view, as well as that of the W3C, that the .mobi TLD is a rather flawed concept to begin with. There is absolutely no need to cordon off a part of the web for a specific audience (users of small-screen mobile devices in this case). TLDs traditionally refer to the nature of the content provider, not the abilities of the user! If we would stick to accessibility standards there would be no need for domains such as .mobi. Imagine telling blind users that they should only access .blind domains and that those with really big monitors should access .large domains!

    Tim Berners-Lee has written an excellent piece outlining his own gripes with this issue: http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/TLD [w3.org]

    Rotan Hanrahan has another: http://www.w3.org/2004/07/dotmobi_diwg.html [w3.org]

  • I'm not so sure the .mobi TLD had much of a chance to begin with, but this will certainly kill adoption. Mobile design is still in its infancy, and there's nothing close to a reasonable and unified standard for mobile page design. There's no real agreement on how content will display on a given device [molly.com].

    Ultimately, compliance with standards should be on a user agent level. If your device can't parse the code that a certain site is sending, it can either fall back to a "quirks mode" rendering scheme (as stan

  • what a JOKE (Score:2, Insightful)

    by tehwebguy ( 860335 )
    maybe they should reconsider their TLD first! come on, .mobi ?!!?

    first of all, it's 4 letters long, longer than most top levels (except country specific ones, i know).

    second of all, it's not simple to type on a telephone keyboard. if someone is using a web enabled phone without a qwerty keyboard they have to type 6, 666 22 444 -- that is a pain in the ass, especially the "6," part. since it starts with MO you must do an M and then wait for the cursor to reappear on most phones

    t9 input could make some of thi
  • regulation sucks, please let the market decide.

  • 1) What gaurantee do we have that the .mobi admins will really track the important (especially emerging) standards correctly? If a new phone comes out that supports some special new wireless web standard that they haven't heard about yet, and I design my site to the new spec, will they drop my domain?

    2) Who said that domain names have anything to do with the web, or at least standard uses of http? Perhaps I want to register a .mobi domain and offer up a service based on my own custom xml api over http, wh

    • Re:Silly (Score:3, Informative)

      by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 )

      What gaurantee do we have that the .mobi admins will really track the important (especially emerging) standards correctly? If a new phone comes out that supports some special new wireless web standard that they haven't heard about yet, and I design my site to the new spec, will they drop my domain?,/i>

      Presumably they will act in the best interest of adding value to their domain, something that means up to date standards, since that is what benefits them. As for some "special new standard" it will dep

  • So somebody that is in charge of the .mobi domain (a DNS convention) is sintending to dictate how people develop stuff that could be referenced there...

    Has it ocurred to these troglodites that what may happen is that people use IP addresses only (nowadays Google or any other search engine is pretty capable to find a site, DNS name or not) or put their websites in domains where the responsible people are not nuts?

    I wish them all the failure they deserve on this idiotic enterprise....
  • Well, this should be the first time an actual standard will be created for the web then.

    I know what you're thinking, "the W3C! they make standards!" Well, they don't. They recommend, but don't actually create any standards at all. Realistically speaking, standards are what you find in the wild (especially in the case of the web). mTLD seems to be doing what nobody else ever had the cajones to do online: enforce a standard on people. I'm quite curious to see how well it goes over and how that translates

  • Yay! (Score:3, Funny)

    by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Monday October 31, 2005 @04:20PM (#13918171) Journal
    This is great. Hopefully when we finally get the xxx TLD, we'll have regulation to assure that we get nothing but top quality porn. I personally would like to put my name forward as a regulator.

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