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

11.5 BROWSER-BASED APPLICATIONS

The second method of accessing a mobile service is to use a browser. The advantages of the browser approach are well known and we have already discussed them in some depth in our earlier discussions on HTTP and CS architectures, along with HTML and its derivatives. Today, we have the wireless-optimised variants called WAP. What we are interested in here is a discussion of the characteristics of a browser-based approach, especially in contrast to the embedded and Java platform applications discussed in this chapter.

One of the advantages of using a browser is that there is no need for application distribution. This is the beauty of the Web. We could have a hundred applications and we don't need a hundred installation files on our device, just the single browser. What we do need is the means to access those applications, which is through a URL, or address, where we can find each of them. Finding applications via their URLs is perhaps the most cumbersome aspect of the mobile Web. We have two problems:

1. Application discovery
2. Physical entry of the address (URL) into the device

Application discovery is about finding the application in the first place. In the mobile context, we have limited options for how we discover applications, simply because we tend to browse infrequently and in general, there are fewer ways to find out about a site we might be interested in surfing, although WAP Push could affect this, as we shall see.

Address entry is the second ...