Mozilla

Posts Tagged with “mobile”

Final (??) 2010 goal for mobile

December 30th, 2008

Goal: Integrate mobile into one unified, open, innovative web

  1. Make the web experience on mobile devices exciting and enjoyable
  2. Products:
    - demonstrate the power of the web as the development platform
    - accelerate innovation from multiple sources
    - delight users, attract developers

  3. New web standards are for all devices, not segregated into mobile-specific or “web” standards.

Revising the 2010 “mobile” goal

December 30th, 2008

To my surprise, at the last discussion of 2010 goals the most active topic was the goal for “mobile.” Here’s a brief summary. I’ll put the actual revised goal in the next post.

Jonas looked at item 2 — “The web becomes the primary ‘SDK’ for applications rather than product specific proprietary SDKs,” and said, “Isn’t that our goal on the desktop as well, not just for mobile?” This is so obviously correct that I’ve moved this item to a bullet point of the general goal: “Make openness, participation and distributed decision-making more common experiences in Internet life.” This also has the advantage of giving us a core technical element, central to what many of us work on every day, in this rather abstract general goal. It’s a truly Mozilla-centric way of advancing the general goal. There’s a piece of this specific to the mobile experience in point 2 of the revised mobile goal.

Jono noted he’d like to see something along the lines of making the web experience on mobile devices fun and exciting, rather than the tortured experience it is today. Again, that seems pretty fundamental and worth capturing explicitly.

We had a long discussion about innovation, fragmentation, mobile devices and the desktop. My response has been to simplify, and try and state the high level  goals, and work out the interactions and complexities as we go along. So I’ve reduced the previous point: “accelerate innovation by reducing the fragmented operating system / carrier / handset problems that developers face today” to “accelerate innovation from multiple sources.” To do this we probably need to reduce fragmentation. We may need to be successful at making the web the development platform. But whatever it is that needs to be done, the goal is  to increase the innovative and generative potential.

We also discussed the question of how to make the web accessible / available to the billions of people who don’t have access today. We haven’t found an approach to this where we have a sense we can make a significant difference so there’s no specific goal here.

Revised mobile goal for 2010

December 12th, 2008

As part of finalizing the 2010 goals I’ve been working through the feedback to each specific goal. I’ll post the results for each goal separately and then assemble them into a complete document.

Here’s the mobile piece. Everything is framed as a goal, rather than a big goal with specific tasks Mozilla ought to accomplish. I think this is the right approach, though I’ve gone back and forth. Many groups within the Mozilla community will identify specific tasks to accomplish these goals.

Goal: Integrate mobile into one unified, open, innovative web

1. Product(s)

  • are as exciting to users and developers as products built on closed proprietary technologies
  • accelerate innovation by reducing the fragmented operating system/ carrier / handset problems that developers face today
  • have mindshare and marketshare to influence the industry

2.  The web becomes the primary “SDK” for applications, rather than product specific proprietary SDKs.

3.  New web standards are for all devices, not segregated into mobile-specific or “web” standards.

Discussion of Mobile Goals — Sept. 17 2008

September 22nd, 2008

On Wednesday, September 17 a group of 10 or 15 people had a discussion about the proposed 2010 “mobile” goal. The notes of that meeting are below. I’ve also incorporated additional comments from the newsgroup. Asa, Atul, and Nanda are interested in facilitating future discussions of these topics. (I’m interested too, but not always around. And in any case the whole goal is to build many connections, with many set of discussions.) Each of them may initiate discussions, 1 or 2 people, maybe groups. If you’re interested in discussing this feel free to contact any of us in addition to commenting here (contact info is at the end.)

I’ve put an outline first, for brevity.

Effective Product in the mobile market means:

  • mindshare
  • marketshare
  • momentum
  • Reference Implementation for the Generative Web
  • Platform issues ongoing (is this an execution issue, or is there a value piece here as well?

One, unified web, including mobile means:

  • Mobile specific presentation, not mobile specific content
  • The Web as SDK
  • General Web standards and APIs, not mobile specific

Effective Product Discussion
Part one of the mobile goal says “have an effective product in the mobile market.”  What do we mean by an “Effective Product”?

  • First, the three “M”s:  mindshare, marketshare, momentum
  • Asa asked if there is there an cross-platform value here as there is on the desktop. We didn’t reach a conclusion on this. (In any case portability as a technical requirement is high.)
  • Reference Implementation for the Generative Web. We also ended up thinking an important goal might well be to make our mobile product a reference implementation for the generative web. In other words, an effective product is one that demonstrates how much innovation and improvement in user experience is possible through openness. We’re looking at a range of products that are (a) tightly controlled up and down the entire stack; and which (2) promote development of applications that aren’t web applications, but are built on closed technologies. We could define an effective product is one that demonstrates this closed, non-web approach is not necessary and is limiting. The exact phrase is mine. I like it because we have long thought of Firefox on the desktop as a “reference implementation for web standards” as well as a great end user product. I like the symmetry here, but even so the phrase itself is not important.
  • Zak asks if an effective product is one which people can use to *author* content, we haven’t talked about this yet.

One Web Discussion
The second part of the proposed mobile goal says “demonstrate that ‘mobile’ is part of one, unified, open web.”

  • We spend a bunch of time talking about mobile specific sites, content and presentation. It’s pretty clear that the size and input mechanisms of mobile devices mean that simply presenting the full website exactly as we see it on the desktop doesn’t always result in the best experience. Our hope is that the tuning for mobile is in *presentation* via CSS and other web-centric techniques. Tuning for presentation can be something good for users. We hope not too see to many mobile-specific sites or very much mobile specific content. That content lives in silos, is not sharable with the web, and ends up promoting the different closed gardens of information and communities that the web has done so much to alleviate. We need to make sure that the web mechanisms available (CSS, etc.) are adequate to the task.
  • Our current label for this idea is: “the Web as SDK.” Build mobile content using web technologies and standards, accessible across devices, and vary the presentation to fit the device.

  • Standards and APIs. We want to avoid mobile-specific standards and APIs. That also encourages fragmentation of content and access. Our goal is to expand the web to be a good mobile platform. This means developing APIs (like geolocation) as part of the web standards so they can be used across the range of devices from mobile to desktop. (We noted that this is not a simple or easy goal. Security is always a concern, as is the multitude of devices.

Broader picture.
Two areas were raised where we weren’t sure how a Mozilla product could help, they seem to have an advocacy or policy basis. We wanted to capture them as areas to look at again, see if the Mozilla Foundation’s programs might address these or there are others working on this who have ideas for which Mozilla is particularly qualified to participate.

  • What about bringing the mobile web to the billions of people in the developing countries / emerging markets?
  • access to the web via mobile devices is very expensive, in both developed and emerging markets.

Future Discussions.
Three of the people in this gathering — Asa (asa at mozilla dot org), Atul (avarma at mozilla dot com) and Nanda (kishore dot nanda at gmail.com) are interesting in facilitating future discussions of these topics. (I’m interested too, but not always around. And in any case the whole goal is to build many connections, with many set of discussions.) Each of them may initiatite discussions, 1 or 2 people, maybe groups. If you’re interested in discussing this feel free to contact any of us, or of course to comment here.

Diving Deeper into the Proposed 2010 Goal for Mobile

September 21st, 2008

Note:  I saw one press article wondering if including “have an effective product in the mobile space” in our 2010 goals means that we won’t ship something interesting until 2010.  That is not the case at all.  We will ship well before then.  The intent of this goal was to say: in 2010 when we look at where we are, it should be screamingly obvious that we’ve done this. That means releasing a good product much sooner, seeing good results and acceptance, and seeing those results grow over time.

We also need to get a bit further on what “effective product” means. The details may or may not end up in the goals statement, brevity may be a big virtue.  But if there aren’t included, we’ll want a place where we capture the next couple of levels of detail.

On that note, I posted some questions about the mobile goal in the mozilla.governance newsgroup last week.  I meant to cross-post here simultaneously, but last week was quite hectic and I missed that.

I’ve proposed a set of product and technology goals for Mozilla for 2010. (http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2008/09/11/proposed-2010-goals/) One of these goals is about the mobile space. It’s below. I believe that the two very high level goals I proposed for mobile are uncontroversial in themselves. If that’s not the case then please speak up asap.

3. Mobile

* have an effective product in the mobile market
* demonstrate that “mobile” is part of one, unified, open web”

Gerv has suggested we talk about what an “effective product” means. Is that a market share number? Some degree of mindshare? Proof that Firefox on mobile devices is as exciting as Firefox on the desktop? Are users the key, or innovation, or speed, or mindshare?

As to the second part of the goal Stuart notes that we’ll need to think about how content is created for devices with different characteristics than a desktop machine, and how this affects our idea of one web. How should we approach this?

What do you think is necessary for an “effective product” on mobile devices?  And how should we think about maintaining one web? Free-flow thoughts are welcome — what’s the picture you’d like to see?

(Some thoughts from summit attendees can be found here. I asked people to put their thoughts on sticky notes and attach them to the various goals. So these are stitched together in any way.)

Last week we also had an initial in person / phone dial-in group discussion regarding the mobile goals. I’ll post about that next.

Skip past the sidebar