The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has brought key players from the mobile phone industry to the virtual table for an agreement on best practices for mobile web content, the group has announced. The framework, 'Mobile Web Application Best Practices', aims to foster cooperation between industry giants to build a more positive experience in the mobile environment.

Although today it is possible to get almost any web site on a mobile phone at an almost-reasonable speed and cost, once signed up for a data plan with a phone company and send and receive e-mail from a regular account, it is still a far cry from using the Internet on a mobile as on a personal computer. This is one of the reasons behind the MOBIWEBBAPP project which put together a research, academic and technology group to hash out how to make the mobile internet a well-oiled machine.

The project is funded in part by the MOBIWEBBAPP (Mobile web applications for future internet services') which is supported under the 'Information and communication technologies' (ICT) Theme of EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). MOBIWEBBAPP is led by W3C, an industry consortium of more than 350 members from research and industry, directed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web.

The document 'Mobile web applications best practices' condenses the experience of many mobile web stakeholders into practical advice for creating content that will work well on any mobile device. Developers and other content producers will value the shared experience of how to create web applications that make browsing convenient on mobile devices and to avoid known pitfalls.

One of their goals was to come up with a list of best practices that all companies in the mobile internet chain would follow. That chain includes phone makers, developers of software for phone browsers and e-mail, mobile phone carriers and the companies that put together web pages to begin with.

Specifically, the best practices were developed by a working group made up of representatives from some of the European and US industry giants including AT&T, Deutsche Telecom, France Telecom, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Opera Software, Vodafone, Volantis.

The common sense behind these best practices, which have just been published, is in fact a model for how personal computers should - but don't always - behave while on the web. If the guidelines are followed, the mobile phone universe could be like a well-rounded, mature version of the Internet found on the personal computer (PC).

It has taken some time for this document to progress to this point, mainly because of the multitude of web applications. Web notifications, web Events, and geolocation working groups are bringing out a wealth of JavaScript APIs (application programming interfaces) that promise to reduce the gap between web and native applications in many computers.

A similar trend is expected in mobile devices. The document examines in detail which web technologies are relevant on mobile devices; highlights various APIs for use in Web applications; and explains both how to follow the suggestions it offers and what each suggestion means.