W3C drafts mobile web development guidelines

Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 offers advice on creating content that works on mobile devices

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) today claimed to have reached an "important milestone" towards making it as easy to use the web on a mobile device as on a desktop computer.

The development centres on the publication of the W3C Mobile Web Best Practices Candidate Recommendation, which explains how to develop websites that work on mobile devices.

"There are many devices, but one web," said Daniel Appelquist, chairman of the Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group.

"Practical guidelines on how to create content once that can be delivered to the plethora of devices saves developers and organisations time and money, and has the added benefit of not breaking the web."

The W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 uses the experience of many web professionals to offer practical advice on creating content that will work well on mobile devices.

Authors and other content producers can find instructions on how to create content that makes browsing convenient on mobile devices, and avoids known pitfalls such as pop-ups and page-scrolling.

The W3C urged the designers of sites and content management systems to read the guidelines, make implementations and test their results with the alpha version of a guideline checker.

In order to build a strong community of mobile web developers, W3C has also launched a wiki to collect observations and suggestions on techniques and implementation experience of Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0.