Compact HTML revisited: interoperability design for the digital appliance era

Compact HTML is a subset of HTML 3.2 for the use of micro browsers in mobile handsets. It was submitted to W3C as a W3C Note in 1998 before the mobile Internet services in Japan were launched. In the emergence of the digital appliance-based Internet, the importance of the minimum markup language is revived. The mobile Internet is shifting toward rich mobile multimedia, however, another emerging market like PHS needs resource-constraint aware standardization even today. The author outlines the browser evolution path. Then the author presents the two perspectives: street HTML and forward-looking interoperability. The author presents the design of Compact HTML 1.1 to respect the three requirements: telephony-aware features, restriction-aware features and Internet convergence features.