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09.12.2008

Open Source Checker Promotes Mobile-Friendly Content

Today, W3C has made it easier to create content designed to improve people's mobile experience using a broad range of devices. W3C invites the community to try the W3C mobileOK checker, which is based on the newly published standard, the mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0 Recommendation.

"The new checker builds on the suite of quality assurance tools offered by W3C to help authors and authoring tool developers create clean content," said Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director. "Clean content offers a number of benefits to authors and users alike. The mobileOK checker does a nice job helping you improve your content one step at a time. Your mobile audience will thank you each time you improve your score."

As shown in the implementation report, there are already several mobileOK sites, including the Google search engine and the mobile version of the Wikipedia Web site. In addition to other mobileOK content portals, newspapers and phone books, a few tools are already known to generate mobileOK content, such as Wordpress' mobile plugin. W3C anticipates that this tool will make it easier for authoring tool developers in particular to make significant strides towards reaching the global mobile community.

mobileOK Makes Checking Easy

The mobileOK Basic tests are based on the part of the Mobile Web Best Practices that can be verified automatically with software. The checker makes use of the popular W3C validator to help improve content quality. In addition to the mobile-friendliness score, the checker offers tips for meeting the needs of people on the go.

Open Source Checker Will Continue to Grow

The mobileOK checker has been developed as an open source project, driven by the Mobile Web Best Practices (MWBP) Working Group which includes leaders from the mobile industry and Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) sponsors. W3C welcomes suggestions for new features and improvements on the checker mailing list, where the list of contributors continues to grow. Support from the MobiWeb2.0 project, part of the European Union's 7th Research Framework Programme (FP7), will enable W3C to continue to actively develop the checker through at least the end of 2009.

Marie-Claire Forgue | Source: alphagalileo
Further information: www.w3.org

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