Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Adapting web content for small screens

What happens when a cell phone accesses a traditional web page? Basically, it does the best it can. One of the biggest challenges for mobile browsers is rendering big web pages on small screens. Browser and device developers have created a few solutions to this problem.

WAP and WML

WAP, the Wireless Application Protocol, is a collection of protocols and specifications that work together to give mobile phones access to Internet-like information. WAP uses Wireless Markup Language (WML) to create wireless applications just as HTML is used to create web pages. WML is an application of XML, meaning that it is defined in a document type definition.

WAP is generally used for creating applications tailored to handheld devices rather than web pages as we think of them. That is why you often see the phrase “Internet-like information” used in regards to WAP. WAP is good for delivering short, pithy bits of data, such as stock prices, sports scores, movie times, and so on. It is not useful for complex documents with visual layouts.

WAP and WML are becoming obsolete now that the mobile industry has embraced standard web technologies on mobile devices .

Shrink-to-fit

The most sophisticated method is to reduce the web page to fit the available width of the device display. They accomplish this by intelligently displaying the contents of the source HTML document sequentially and shrinking graphics to fit. The best known browsers that use this technique are Opera’s ...