Find out how to use new Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and Wireless Markup Language (WML) technologies so that users can access your Web applications using a variety of handheld or mobile devices, including Palm organizers, phones, and others. Carol includes five guidelines for designing for the small screen.
I know what you're thinking: Who would want to surf the Web on a tiny little screen while driving down the highway? Probably no one you'd want to carpool with. But think about it from a different perspective, and it sounds a lot more appealing: Suppose you're walking down the street with a friend who tells you about a great new book that you'd probably like. Wouldn't it be great to buy it on the spot and have it shipped to your home?
Or suppose you arrive at O'Hare airport in Chicago to discover that your connecting flight has been canceled. You could dial up the travel agent and wait on hold doing a slow burn while you wonder which gate or ticket counter to sprint toward. Wouldn't it be better if you could find the alternative flights right on your phone's display and start directly for the gate? Or how about getting notified about the price of a certain stock, without having to look it up?
Well, you can do all that today, and much more. Read on, to find out how to use the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and Wireless Markup Language (WML) to make your Web applications accessible across the Internet from a variety of handheld or mobile devices, including Palm organizers, phones, and others.
WML and WAP basics
If you're reading this article, odds are that you're already familiar with HTML, the tag language used to make Web pages. To refresh your memory of HTML basics for the purpose of comparison, after you write an HTML page, you save it with an .HTML file extension, and then you place it in a specific folder of your Web server (called the
|
