Next Generation Wireless Applications: Creating Mobile Applications in a Web 2.0 and Mobile 2.0 World, 2nd Edition

8.3 FULL CIRCLE – WML ‘BECOMES’ XHTML

As we discovered in the previous chapter, when looking at mobile protocols, WAP progressed from WAP 1 to WAP 2. In doing so, it moved a step closer to the fully blown desktop browser model, especially with respect to the protocols and the wireless profiles of HTTP and TCP, which are completely compatible with standard HTTP and TCP.

It would be folly to suggest that we dispense with wireless optimisations altogether. This is especially true when considering which markup language to use. Clearly, mobile devices have severe display constraints compared with desktop devices. This would suggest that utilising an identical approach is not going to work and this is a topic we critically examined in Chapter 2. Certainly, the idea of viewing standard web pages on mobile devices is anathema to giving the mobile user a compelling experience. All our notions of usability are contravened by asking a user to wade around a page that is up to twenty times too big for the display.

From WAP 1 to WAP 2, the era has seen the advent of many more devices capable of displaying colour and a higher density of pixels. Screen sizes have also increased on many devices. At the same time, as we have already noted when looking at protocols, the ability to connect a wireless device to the Internet has become easier. As we shall see when we look at RF network protocols, the mobile networks have evolved from circuit-switch technology to packet-switched.

The main advantage of ...