Mobile Web

mobile devices, mobile operating systems, and browsers.

Usability problems are centered on the small physical
size of the mobile phone form factors (limits on display
resolution and user input/operating). Despite these
shortcomings, many mobile developers choose to create
apps using mobile Web. A June 2011 research on mobile
development found mobile Web the third most used
platform, trailing Android and iOS.[5]
Websites re-designed for mobile screens, with sizes ranging from
smartphones, netbooks, and tablets, to laptops, with a desktop
screen shown for scale.

In an article in Communications of the ACM in April

2013, Web technologist Nicholas C. Zakas, noted that
mobile phones in use in 2013 were more powerful than
Apollo 11's 70 lb (32 kg) Apollo Guidance Computer
used in the July 1969 lunar landing.[6][7][8] However, in
spite of their power, in 2013, mobile devices still suer
from Web performance with slow connections similar to
the 1996 stage of Web development.[7][8] Mobile devices
with slower download request/response times, the latency
of over-the-air data transmission,[7][8] with high-latency
connections, slower CPUs, and less memory force developers to rethink Web applications created for desktops
with wired connections, fast CPUs, and almost endless
memory.[7][8]

The mobile web refers to access to the world wide web,

i.e. the use of browser-based Internet services, from a
handheld mobile device, such as a smartphone or a feature
phone, connected to a mobile network or other wireless
network.
Traditionally, access to the Web has been via xedline services on laptops and desktop computers. However, the Web is becoming more accessible by portable
and wireless devices. An early 2010 ITU (International
Telecommunication Union) report said that with the current growth rates, web access by people on the go via
laptops and smart mobile devices is likely to exceed
web access from desktop computers within the next ve
years.[1] The shift to mobile Web access has been accelerating with the rise since 2007 of larger multitouch smartphones, and of multitouch tablet computers since 2010.
Both platforms provide better Internet access, screens,
and mobile browsers- or application-based user Web experiences than previous generations of mobile devices
have done. Web designers may work separately on such
pages, or pages may be automatically converted as in
Mobile Wikipedia.
The distinction between mobile Web applications and native applications is anticipated to become increasingly
blurred, as mobile browsers gain direct access to the hardware of mobile devices (including accelerometers and
GPS chips), and the speed and abilities of browser-based
applications improve. Persistent storage and access to sophisticated user interface graphics functions may further
reduce the need for the development of platform-specic
native applications.
The Mobile Web has also been called Web 3.0, drawing
parallels to the changes users were experiencing as Web
2.0 websites proliferated.[2][3][4]

Mobile Web access today still suers from Wikipedia viewed with Opera Mini mobile web browser on a
interoperability and usability problems.
Interoper- small-screen cellphone
ability issues stem from the platform fragmentation of
1

Mobile access

DEVELOPMENT

cessibility of mobile web usage.

The Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) was set up by the W3C

Further information: Mobile browser, Wireless broad- to develop the best practices and technologies relevant to
band, and Mobile Internet growth
the mobile Web. The goal of the initiative is to make
browsing the Web from mobile devices more reliable and
'Mobile Internet' refers to access to the Internet via a cel- accessible. The main aim is to evolve standards of data
lular telephone service provider. It is wireless access that formats from Internet providers that are tailored to the
can hando to another radio tower while it is moving specications of particular mobile devices. The W3C has
across the service area. It can refer an immobile device published guidelines for mobile content, and is addressing
that stays connected to one tower, but this is not the mean- the problem of device diversity by establishing a technoling of mobile here. Wi-Fi and other better methods are ogy to support a repository of device descriptions.
commonly available for users not on the move. Cellular
base stations are more expensive to provide than a wireless base station that connects directly to an internet service provider, rather than through the telephone system.

W3C is also developing a validating scheme to assess

the readiness of content for the mobile web, through its
mobileOK Scheme, which will help content developers
to quickly determine if their content is web-ready. The
W3C guidelines and mobile OK approach have not been
immune from criticism. This puts the emphasis on Adaptation, which is now seen as the key process in achieving
the ubiquitous web, when combined with a device description repository.

A mobile phone, such as a smartphone, that connects to

data or voice services without going through the cellular base station is not on mobile Internet. A laptop with
a broadband modem and a cellular service provider subscription, that is traveling on a bus through the city is on
mobile Internet.
mTLD, the registry for .mobi, has released a free testA mobile broadband modem "tethers" the smartphone to ing tool called the MobiReady Report (see mobiForge)
one or more computers or other end user devices to pro- to analyze the mobile readiness of website. It does a free
vide access to the Internet via the protocols that cellular page analysis and gives a Mobi Ready score. This report
tests the mobile-readiness of the site using industry best
telephone service providers may oer.
practices and standards.
According to BuzzCity, mobile internet increased 30%
from Q1 to Q2 2011. The four countries which have ad- Other standards for the mobile web are being documented
vertising impression (?) in total more than 1 billion in and explored for particular applications by interested inone quarter were India, Indonesia, Vietnam and United dustry groups, such as the use of the mobile web for the
States.[9] As of July 2012, approximately 10.5% of all purpose of education and training.
Web trac occurs through mobile devices (up from 4%
in December 2010).[10]

3 Development

Standards

The rst access to the mobile web was commercially offered in Finland in 1996 on the Nokia 9000 Communicator phone via the Sonera and Radiolinja networks.
See also: List of mobile phone standards
This was access to the real internet. The rst commerStandards improve the interoperability, usability, and accial launch of a mobile-specic browser-based web service was in 1999 in Japan when i-mode was launched by
NTT DoCoMo.

Evolution of mobile web standards

Total data consumed by Opera Mini users worldwide from 2006

to mid-2008 in TB

The mobile Web primarily utilises lightweight pages like

this one written in Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) or Wireless Markup Language (WML)

3
to deliver content to mobile devices. Many new mobile
browsers are moving beyond these limits by supporting a
wider range of Web formats, including variants of HTML
commonly found on the desktop Web.

Top-level domain

The .mobi sponsored top-level domain was launched

specically for the mobile Internet by a consortium of
companies including Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung, and Vodafone. By forcing sites to comply with
mobile web standards, .mobi tries to ensure visitors a
consistent and optimized experience on their mobile device. However, this domain has been criticized by several
big names, including Tim Berners-Lee of the W3C, who
claims that it breaks the device independence of the web:
1

It is fundamentally useful to be able to quote

the URI for some information and then look up
that URI in an entirely dierent context. For example, I may want to look up a restaurant on my
laptop, bookmark it, and then, when I only have
my phone, check the bookmark to have a look at
the evening menu. Or, my travel agent may send
me a pointer to my itinerary for a business trip.
I may view the itinerary from my oce on a
large screen and want to see the map, or I may
view it at the airport from my phone when all I
want is the gate number.
Dividing the Web into information destined
for dierent devices, or dierent classes of user,
or dierent classes of information, breaks the
Web in a fundamental way.
I urge ICANN not to create the ".mobi top
level domain.

Advertising

Main article: Mobile advertising

Advertisers are increasingly using the mobile Web as a
platform to reach consumers. The total value of advertising on mobile was 2.2 billion dollars in 2007. A recent study by the Online Publishers Association reported
that about one-in-ten mobile Web users said they have
made a purchase based on a mobile Web ad, while 23%
said they have visited a Web site, 13% said they have requested more information about a product or service and
11% said they have gone to a store to check out a product.

Social network service mobile graphical user interface

(Facebook)

6 Limitations
Though Internet access on the go provides advantages
to many, such as the ability to communicate by email
with others and obtain information anywhere, the web,
accessed from mobile devices, has many limits, which
may vary, depending on the device. However, newer
smartphones overcome some of these restrictions. Some
problems which may be encountered include:
Small screen size This makes it dicult or impossible to see text and graphics dependent on the
standard size of a desktop computer screen.
Lack of windows On a desktop computer, the
ability to open more than one window at a time allows for multi-tasking and for easy revert to a previous page. Historically on mobile web, only one
page could be displayed at a time, and pages could
only be viewed in the sequence they were originally accessed. However, Opera Mini[11] was among
the rst allowing multiple windows, and browser
tabs have become commonplace but few mobile
browsers allow overlapping windows on the screen.
Navigation Navigation is a problem for websites
not optimized for mobile devices as the content area

REFERENCES

is large, the screen size is small, and there is no scroll Security is a key aspect in this provision in order to prowheel or hoverbox feature.
tect users from malicious web applications and widgets.
Lack of JavaScript and cookies Most devices do
not support client-side scripting and storage of cookies (smartphones excluded), which are now widely
used in most Web sites to enhance user experience,
facilitating the validation of data entered by the page
visitor, etc. This also results in web analytics tools
being unable to uniquely identify visitors using mobile devices.
Types of pages accessible Many sites that can be
accessed on a desktop cannot on a mobile device.
Many devices cannot access pages with a secured
connection, Flash or other similar software, PDFs,
or video sites, although as of 2011, this has been
changing.
Speed On most mobile devices, the speed of service is slow, sometimes slower than dial-up Internet
access.
Broken pages On many devices, a single page as
viewed on a desktop is broken into segments, each
treated as a separate page. This further slows navigation.

In addition to the limits of the device, there are limits

that should be made known to users concerning the interference these devices cause in other electromagnetic
technology.
The convergence of the Internet and phone, in particular
has caused hospitals to increase their mobile phone exclusion zones. A study by Erik van Lieshout and colleagues
(Academic Medical Centre, University of Amsterdam)
has found that the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS)
used in modern phones can aect machines from up to
3 meters away. The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) signals, used in 3G networks, have
a smaller exclusion zone of just a few centimeters. The
worst oenders in hospitals are the doctors.[13]

7 See also
Apache Mobile Filter
CTIA The Wireless Association
HTML5 in mobile devices

Compressed pages Many pages, in their conversion to mobile format, are squeezed into an order dierent from how they would customarily be
viewed on a desktop computer.

Japanese mobile phone culture

Size of messages Many devices have limits on the

number of characters that can be sent in an email
message.

Mobile content

Cost the access and bandwidth charges levied by

cellphone networks can be high if there is no at fee
per month.

Mobile publishing

Location of mobile user:

if advertisements reach phone users in private locations, users nd them more distressful
(Banerjee & Dholakia, 2008)

.mobi
Mobile browser

Mobile dating

pliba
Wireless Application Protocol

8 References

if the user is abroad the at fee per month usually does not apply

[1] Press Release: ITU sees 5 billion mobile subscriptions

globally in 2010.

Situation in which ad reaches user When advertisements reach users in work-related situations,
they may be considered more intrusive than in
leisure situations (Banerjee & Dholakia, 2008)

[2] Web 3.0: The Mobile Era. TechCrunch. 2012-08-11.

Retrieved 2014-02-03.

The inability of mobile web applications to access the local capabilities on the mobile device can limit their ability
to provide the same features as native applications. The
OMTP BONDI activity is acting as a catalyst to enable
a set of JavaScript APIs which can access local capabilities in a secure way on the mobile device. Specications
and a reference implementation[12] have been produced.

[4] Kevin Tea (2012-08-28). Web 3.0 Is Here And Its Mobile | BCW. Businesscomputingworld.co.uk. Retrieved
2014-02-03.

[3] Web 3.0 to Merge the Physical and the Virtual - Technorati Business. Technorati.com. 2012-09-26. Retrieved
2014-02-03.

[5] Developer Economics 2011.

[6] Robertson, Grant (20 July 2009). How powerful was the
Apollo 11 computer?".

[7] Zakas, Nicholas C. (17 February 2013). The Evolution

of Web Development for Mobile Devices: Building Web
sites that perform well on mobile devices remains a challenge.. Association for Computing Machinery.
[8] Zakas, Nicholas C. (April 2013). The Evolution of
Web Development for Mobile Devices: Building Web
sites that perform well on mobile devices remains a challenge.. Communications of the ACM (New York, New
York: Association for Computing Machinery) 56 (4).
[9] BuzzCity: Mobile Ads are Growing, Indonesia is Still #2
in The World. July 18, 2011.
[10] Macmanus, Richard. Top Trends of 2012: The Continuing Rapid Growth of Mobile. ReadWriteWeb. Retrieved
6 July 2012.
[11] Download Opera browser for mobile devices - Opera
Software. Opera.com. Retrieved 2013-11-02.
[12] BONDI Reference Implementation. omtp.org. Retrieved 2014-02-03.
[13] New Scientist, 15 September 2007: 5

External links
Mobilizing Scholars: using mobile devices in scientic research, May 2006.
Jo Rabin, mTLD Mobile Top Level Domain (dotMobi), Mobile Web Best Practices, 2 November
2006
Hoschka, Philipp, The W3C Mobile Web Initiative
(MWI), W3C, 2005.
W3C mobileOK Checker

10

10
10.1

TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

Text

Mobile Web Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Web?oldid=630481767 Contributors: Edward, Patrick, WhisperToMe, Hendry,

Alanl, SoWhy, Cynical, Jayjg, Vincom2, Discospinster, Rich Farmbrough, Oliver Ruehl, Notinasnaid, EurekaLott, Adambro, RichardRothwell, Alansohn, Versageek, Woohookitty, BD2412, Rjwilmsi, Ctempleton3, Vegaswikian, Evanwolf, Brianreading, Mathiastck, KFP,
Rotan, WhyBeNormal, Korg, Wavelength, Klingoncowboy4, Kafziel, Arichnad, Ben b, Voidxor, Tony1, Zzuuzz, PTSE, Flood of SYNs,
JLaTondre, Buldoer, Guifa, SmackBot, Rudydw, Steve carlson, McGeddon, Dappelquist, Ohnoitsjamie, Betacommand, KD5TVI,
Fdavis99, Caseydk, Ruarkr.2008, Warren, Lambiam, Gonioul, Ckatz, Jyi, TastyPoutine, White Ash, Majorbonkers, KevinTraver,
Dka1, Mr3641, CmdrObot, Osoneill, Cydebot, Gogo Dodo, ChrisLoh, Firstauthor, Quibik, Kozuch, Robin.jewsbury, Dwmdc, Hervegirod, Dawnseeker2000, Navigatr85, Trlkly, Wellsie1607, Obiwankenobi, AnAj, Wizmo, Julie Deanna, Harryzilber, MER-C, Goodrone,
Kippspan, Diego bf109, Destynova, Catgut, Dappawit, Punchkickinteractive, Oicumayberight, Gwern, Flowanda, Sagabot, Jim.henderson,
Pharaoh of the Wizards, Mange01, Tomsoft, KenSharp, Darkride, Balsa10, Cpiral, Katalaveno, Sebwite, Oceanynn, Grfnkmp, Remember
the dot, Bonadea, HighKing, Bvanmaele, Funandtrvl, Akmintech, Cleverclog, AgentCDE, Nathan Fact Finder, Vchimpanzee, Ruadhan,
AlleborgoBot, Jerryobject, Bentogoa, Nopetro, Giarec, Wikiven, Tomi T Ahonen, Sqrtminusone, Fishnet37222, Dmh2007, MenoBot,
ClueBot, Snigbrook, Tintinobelisk, Sidarthian, JackGershman, Shaliya waya, Trivialist, Glaurio2000, Alexbot, KEENMAS214, Toadman10, Nukeless, Isaacrajan, KaliG, XLinkBot, Ha runner, Addbot, Schesnais, PatrickFlaherty, MrOllie, SpBot, Luckas-bot, Yobot,
Mmxx, Sedathut, Healy229, Flewis, Nigelankin, Wapxana, Xqbot, Lucidwayn, Adguy283, Mrbconley, Leedavies, Mamma duck, Mobilewebinc, MobiMe, Mvate, GrouchoBot, Kurtdriver, Mark Schierbecker, Karghazini, FrescoBot, Notveryhere, W Nowicki, D'ohBot,
Gallopingurchin, Joebigwheel, Nbelloni, Smehta123, Codf1977, TobeBot, TR2M, Obankston, Helmoony, CML NZ, EmausBot, AppuruPan, Evanh2008, Gz33, Gsarwa, Donner60, RaunakR, Jwild, ClueBot NG, Mattkap2, Ngo23, Widr, Voogzy, BG19bot, Martintuner12,
Sayuconnect, Le Lapin Vert, Iambruni, AlbertodeOz, Suckerpunch21, SuperHero2111, Nozomimous, SFK2, Palmtree5551, Corn cheese,
Beredman, Csteinb, Syamsunders, Atom.millions, ArmbrustBot, Serpetuity, Craignic1708, Mugsychicago, Aliceeyyy, Designmobilesite,
Gadilif, Juligaletti, Pradyut barik, Berrythewebguy, Cctush, XFacco, Johnignite, Janershaer123 and Anonymous: 158

10.2

Images

File:Commons-logo.svg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg License: ? Contributors: ? Original

artist: ?
File:Crystal_Clear_app_browser.png Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Crystal_Clear_app_browser.png
License: LGPL Contributors: All Crystal icons were posted by the author as LGPL on kde-look Original artist: Everaldo Coelho and
YellowIcon
File:Crystal_Clear_device_cdrom_unmount.png Source:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/Crystal_Clear_
device_cdrom_unmount.png License: LGPL Contributors: All Crystal icons were posted by the author as LGPL on kde-look Original
artist: Everaldo Coelho and YellowIcon
File:Facebook_mobile.png Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7a/Facebook_mobile.png License: Fair use Contributors:
http://blogoehlert.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/08/28/fbiphone1.jpg Original artist: ?
File:Folder_Hexagonal_Icon.svg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/48/Folder_Hexagonal_Icon.svg License: ? Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Mobile_Web_Standards_Evolution_Vector.svg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Mobile_Web_
Standards_Evolution_Vector.svg License: CC-BY-3.0 Contributors: Own work Original artist: . Original uploader was Matthew Stuckwisch at en.wikipedia
File:Opera_Mini_using_the_new_interface_for_Wikipedia_mobile.jpg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/
c3/Opera_Mini_using_the_new_interface_for_Wikipedia_mobile.jpg License: ? Contributors: Own work Original artist: User:TheDJ
File:Portal-puzzle.svg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fd/Portal-puzzle.svg License: ? Contributors: ? Original artist:
?
File:Responsive_Web_Design.png Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Responsive_Web_Design.png License: CC-BY-SA-3.0 Contributors: INCRIdea Indonesia Original artist: Muhammad Razeldi (Google+)
File:Telecom-icon.svg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Telecom-icon.svg License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Total_data_consumed_by_Opera_Mini_users_worldwide_(TB).png Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/
d/d4/Total_data_consumed_by_Opera_Mini_users_worldwide_%28TB%29.png License: CC-BY-SA-3.0 Contributors: Own work Original artist: Kozuch

10.3

Content license

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