The company has formed a new W3C working group with browser makers, device manufacturers and others in order to improve and standardise mobile browsers, but Apple and Google have not signed up
Facebook, along with several other major mobile web players, has set up a new working group that aims to improve and standardise mobile browsers.
Facebook has set up a new working group that aims to standardise mobile browsers, as it looks to plug more apps into its Open Graph timeline.Image credit: Facebook
The Mobile Web Platform Core Community Group, which will operate
under the auspices of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), was
announced on Monday at the start of Mobile World Congress in
Barcelona. The ultimate purpose of the group is to make it easier for
developers to figure out which browsers and devices will support their
mobile web apps.
Mobile web standardisation is crucial to Facebook. The company's
developer relations chief, Douglas Purdy, wrote in a
blog post on Monday that the social network is accessed by more
people through the mobile web than through all the native mobile
Facebook apps — those for iOS and Android, for example —
combined.
"We know the mobile web is important for reach. So why aren't more
people building apps for the mobile web? We hear from developers that
there are three challenge areas that make it hard to build on the
mobile web: app discovery, mobile browser fragmentation and payments,"
Purdy wrote.
Harnessing Open Graph
As on the desktop, Facebook hopes to take care of mobile web app
discovery by encouraging developers to plug their apps into the
company's Open Graph. Doing so makes it possible for users to display
their interactions with the app in their timelines
and tickers, which in turn encourages their friends and contacts to
try out the same app.
It is already possible for mobile web apps and native iOS apps
to hook up to the Open Graph, and Facebook said the same ability would
soon come to native Android apps.
We know the mobile web is important for reach. So why aren't more people building apps for the mobile web?.
– Douglas Purdy, Facebook
However, there are many web browsers out there and their
capabilities vary — hence Facebook joining the community group
in the hope of creating a level playing field. Other participants in
the group range from device manufacturers such as Sony and Nokia to
operators such as Orange and Verizon, as well as a variety of
chipmakers and content companies.
Naturally, browser-making firms including Microsoft, Mozilla and
Opera are also in there. Apple and Google, though, are notable
absentees. ZDNet UK has asked both those companies why they did not
sign up, but had not received replies at the time of writing.
As part of its commitment to the group, Facebook has donated a
mobile browser benchmark tool called Ringmark, which provides a fairly
simple graphical representation of a mobile browser's ability to
handle different types of apps. The tool was developed alongside the
web technology company Bocoup.
Billing arrangements
Meanwhile, Purdy also noted that Facebook is working on
"streamlined billing" arrangements with operators around the world.
This sort of deal makes it a lot easier to handle payment systems
in mobile web apps — native apps do not present as much of a
problem here, as their users are usually already signed up to payment
systems associated with the app store.
"We're working with operators around the world to minimise the
number of steps needed to complete a transaction in mobile web apps,
which will make it easier for hundreds of millions of people worldwide
to purchase apps on their device via operator billing," Purdy wrote.
"This will be automatically enabled where carriers support it when you
integrate the Pay Dialog into your app."
The operators working with Facebook on billing include AT&T,
Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica, T-Mobile USA, Verizon, Vodafone,
KDDI and Softbank.
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