wyrickj
07-07-2004, 10:43 PM
WAP Your Site
While more and more people are using wireless devices such as a mobile phone, PDA, Smart Phones, etc to search and find information on the Internet you are lagging behind possible sales because your site is not wirelessly accessible. Why do I want my site wirelessly accessible in the first place you may ask? Find the answers below and reasons why you want your site WAP accessible.
Your Answers to why you want your site wirelessly accessible:
• People these days are so busy on the road that they don't have time to stop at a hotel to buy something. If they have a cell phone or other mobile device that can connect to the Internet that person is willing to make that sale more than the person that has to wait till he/she gets home from traveling / work.
• Display your site to a wider audience
• Take your corporate applications to the next level with making them wirelessly accessible like email. Exchange 2003 from Microsoft is able to make your inbox wirelessly available on your PDA, Cell Phone, etc.
So if you were thinking of not making your site accessible for wireless users then you may lose sales or your site is behind in technology.
How do I write this so called WAP Site:
• You can use Macromedia Dreamweaver MX & higher with the Nokia Mobile Toolkit to write applications for Nokia users
• Microsoft Mobile Internet Toolkit for Visual Studio.NET and ASP.NET Users (Recommended)
• A shareware WYSIWYG Editor
• Hand code the site in Notepad or similar text editors
• Hire someone
The HTML you know now is a bit different in a WAP site. WAP uses what's called WML (Wireless Markup Language) to render the content. Just like HTML but it's a bit different. So how is the tags between HTML and WML differ? What does WML tags look like? Below is a picture displaying a real sample of WAP / WML Tags.
WML Decks and Cards
WML pages are called DECKS. They are constructed as a set of CARDS, related to each other with links. When a WML page is accessed from a mobile phone, all the cards in the page are downloaded from the WAP server. Navigation between the cards is done by the phone computer - inside the phone - without any extra access trips to the server.
Does our web server need to be able to handle WAP sites?
Yes it's easy with Internet Information Services if your a Windows Server person. All you need to do is edit your MIME Types in IIS.
Resources you can go to find help on WAP and WML:
• http://www.w3schools.com/wap/default.asp
• http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,8764,399,00.html
• http://www.wapforum.org/
I heard you talk about the Microsoft Mobile Internet Toolkit. What is that?
Microsoft*Mobile*Internet*Toolkit
Writing dynamic, high-performance mobile Web applications has never been easier
Over the past few years, the world has seen an explosion of new wireless devices, such as cell phones, pagers, and personal digital assistants (PDAs), which enable users to browse Web sites at any time from any location. Developing applications for these devices is challenging for the following reasons:
Different markup languages are necessary, including HTML for PDAs, wireless markup language (WML) for wireless application protocol (WAP) cell phones, and compact HTML (cHTML) for Japanese i-mode phones.
Devices have different form factors. For example, devices have varying numbers of display lines, horizontal or vertical screen orientation, and color or black and white displays.
Devices have different network connectivity, ranging from 9.6 KB cellular connections to 11 MB Wireless LANs.
Devices have different capabilities. Some devices can display images, some can make phone calls, and some can receive notification messages.
The Microsoft Mobile Internet Toolkit addresses these challenges by isolating them from the details of wireless development. Thus, developers can quickly and easily build a single, mobile Web application that delivers appropriate markup for a wide variety of mobile devices.
Source - http://www.asp.net/mobile/intro.aspx?tabindex=6
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
About Author:
Jeff Wyrick is the owner of Michigan Web Solutions, a growing Professional Web Design Company serving customers in the mid to high budget web design field. Jeff specializes in mid to high budget design services such as Flash Authoring and Web Visual Effects.
While more and more people are using wireless devices such as a mobile phone, PDA, Smart Phones, etc to search and find information on the Internet you are lagging behind possible sales because your site is not wirelessly accessible. Why do I want my site wirelessly accessible in the first place you may ask? Find the answers below and reasons why you want your site WAP accessible.
Your Answers to why you want your site wirelessly accessible:
• People these days are so busy on the road that they don't have time to stop at a hotel to buy something. If they have a cell phone or other mobile device that can connect to the Internet that person is willing to make that sale more than the person that has to wait till he/she gets home from traveling / work.
• Display your site to a wider audience
• Take your corporate applications to the next level with making them wirelessly accessible like email. Exchange 2003 from Microsoft is able to make your inbox wirelessly available on your PDA, Cell Phone, etc.
So if you were thinking of not making your site accessible for wireless users then you may lose sales or your site is behind in technology.
How do I write this so called WAP Site:
• You can use Macromedia Dreamweaver MX & higher with the Nokia Mobile Toolkit to write applications for Nokia users
• Microsoft Mobile Internet Toolkit for Visual Studio.NET and ASP.NET Users (Recommended)
• A shareware WYSIWYG Editor
• Hand code the site in Notepad or similar text editors
• Hire someone
The HTML you know now is a bit different in a WAP site. WAP uses what's called WML (Wireless Markup Language) to render the content. Just like HTML but it's a bit different. So how is the tags between HTML and WML differ? What does WML tags look like? Below is a picture displaying a real sample of WAP / WML Tags.
WML Decks and Cards
WML pages are called DECKS. They are constructed as a set of CARDS, related to each other with links. When a WML page is accessed from a mobile phone, all the cards in the page are downloaded from the WAP server. Navigation between the cards is done by the phone computer - inside the phone - without any extra access trips to the server.
Does our web server need to be able to handle WAP sites?
Yes it's easy with Internet Information Services if your a Windows Server person. All you need to do is edit your MIME Types in IIS.
Resources you can go to find help on WAP and WML:
• http://www.w3schools.com/wap/default.asp
• http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,8764,399,00.html
• http://www.wapforum.org/
I heard you talk about the Microsoft Mobile Internet Toolkit. What is that?
Microsoft*Mobile*Internet*Toolkit
Writing dynamic, high-performance mobile Web applications has never been easier
Over the past few years, the world has seen an explosion of new wireless devices, such as cell phones, pagers, and personal digital assistants (PDAs), which enable users to browse Web sites at any time from any location. Developing applications for these devices is challenging for the following reasons:
Different markup languages are necessary, including HTML for PDAs, wireless markup language (WML) for wireless application protocol (WAP) cell phones, and compact HTML (cHTML) for Japanese i-mode phones.
Devices have different form factors. For example, devices have varying numbers of display lines, horizontal or vertical screen orientation, and color or black and white displays.
Devices have different network connectivity, ranging from 9.6 KB cellular connections to 11 MB Wireless LANs.
Devices have different capabilities. Some devices can display images, some can make phone calls, and some can receive notification messages.
The Microsoft Mobile Internet Toolkit addresses these challenges by isolating them from the details of wireless development. Thus, developers can quickly and easily build a single, mobile Web application that delivers appropriate markup for a wide variety of mobile devices.
Source - http://www.asp.net/mobile/intro.aspx?tabindex=6
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
About Author:
Jeff Wyrick is the owner of Michigan Web Solutions, a growing Professional Web Design Company serving customers in the mid to high budget web design field. Jeff specializes in mid to high budget design services such as Flash Authoring and Web Visual Effects.