Feedback sought on open testing framework for the Mobile Web

(sorry for cross-posting, please follow-up on
public-mwtsw3.org)

Hello Mobile Web Fans,

The recently chartered Mobile Web Test Suites Working Group
[1] is
seeking public feedback on one of its proposed deliverables
: an open
testing framework for the Mobile Web, testing mobile web
user agents for
the benefits of mobile web developers.

The overall goal of such a framework would be to allow the
community to
understand better how mobile web user agents available today
react to
various authoring practices (CSS tricks, javascript
compatibility,
advanced markup techniques, etc).

To that end, the Test Suites Working Group is looking at
setting up a
framework that would allow:
      * anybody to submit test cases that they think would
help assess
        support of a specific technical point in user
agents; a few
        groups and individuals have already started to
collect some of
        these tests cases, and the Working Group would like
to serve as
        a point of collection and development for these
      * anybody to submit test results based on the above
mentioned test
        cases
      * anybody to consult the statistical results posted by
the
        community; these could hopefully lead at the
creation of
        compatibility tables as some have been developed in
the "desktop
        browser" world

The Working Group would review, select and possibly amend
the test cases
submissions to produce a blessed test suite that would get
most of the
focus, but may still hosts the other test cases in case they
would help
a more restricted community.

Before we invest the time and effort required to make such a
system
possible, the Working Group would like to get feedback on
this project,
in particular to see how many of Web developers would be
interested in
contributing to that project, as well as using its results.

To that end, we have set up a fairly short survey that
shouldn't take
you more than a few minutes to answer:
http://www.w3.
org/2002/09/wbs/1/mwits/

The survey is open until March 16 (but please let me know if
you think
you'll need more time).

We would also appreciate if subscribers to these lists could
forward
that request for feedback to other relevant groups and
communities as
they see adequate, including blogging about it if they see
this as a
relevant topic for their audience. The level of answers
we'll get on
this survey will also help us assess the usefulness and the
practicality
of setting up such a system.

Thank you for your time,

Dom
Mobile Web Test Suites WG co-chair

1. http://www.w3.org/2
005/MWI/Tests/