New web standard helps mobile devices

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	New web standard helps mobile devices	By Anthony Newman, Friday 16 January 2004

World Wide Web Consortium releases recommendation for device-server communication, aims to help mobile devices get better access.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announces the release of the Composite Capability/Preference Profiles (CC/PP): Structure and Vocabularies 1.0 Recommendation. CC/PP 1.0 is a system for expressing device capabilities and user preferences, using the Resource Description Framework (RDF). Used to guide the adaptation of content, a CC/PP profile describes device capabilities and user preferences.

A W3C Recommendation is the equivalent of a Web standard, indicating that this W3C-developed specification is stable, contributes to Web interoperability, and has been reviewed by the W3C Membership, who favour its adoption by the industry.

One of the W3C's primary goals is Universal Access. Users must be able to use their choice of devices to access web content, in ways that are appropriate for their hardware capabilities, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical abilities. CC/PP provides a standardized format of the description of information that will allow Web-enabled devices to effectively communicate their capabilities to the desired server.

In simple terms, it's been clear that there needed to be a standard way for a cellphone or a personal digital assistant with Web access to be able to say to a Web server, "I am a cellphone. My display size will not allow me to see a framed site. Please deliver the content in detailed lists instead." This is an example of what is known as a "delivery context," where the device characteristics, user preferences, and constraints put requirements on how content can be effectively displayed on the device for the user.

This is precisely the purpose of CC/PP. CC/PP is an extensible framework that can be used for communicating the delivery context from a device to a Web server, resulting in the delivery of Web content that is usable on a given device.

CC/PP was designed at a time when mobile phones were emerging. The specification takes into account their specific features, particularly in bandwidth restriction. Thus, clients have the choice of providing their CC/PP information as a link (URI) to a description available on the Web, instead of providing the information itself.

The User Agent Profile (UAProf) specification developed by the Open Mobile Alliance (and formerly by the WAP Forum) is a CC/PP vocabulary dedicated to mobile phone description. Today, mobile phones complying with the UAProf specification provide CC/PP descriptions of their capabilities to servers - literally millions of devices are already using CC/PP.

Upon their completion of the CC/PP Structure and Vocabularies 1.0, the Device Independence Working Group plans to continue work on a revision of the 1.0 specification to include the final version of RDF datatyping currently under development by the W3C RDF Core Working Group.