Wireless Markup Language (WML) is the language used to design Internet sites viewable by devices such as mobile phones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), and pagers. Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is the framework that allows wireless devices to access the Internet. WML "pages" are referred to as cards, with related cards for a site grouped into decks. Rather than downloading each card individually, your WAP browser actually downloads the entire deck.

WAP stands for "Wireless Access Protocol" and is loosely (and inaccurately) used to refer to devices (such a phones, PDA's, handhelds, etc.) that can access the internet. The confusion comes from the fact that Sprint phones have browsers that are compatible with multiple types of web pages, including WAP. A site compatible with your phone may be HTML, XHMTL, or WAP (i.e., WML). A "true" WAP site is a web site with pages written in WML rather than HTML.

WML is a mark-up language for WAP-enabled devices, being equivalent to HTML for web browsers. WMLScript is a scripting language that provides the ability to write self-contained applications that interact with the user and carry out calculations etc. WMLScript can also be used to generate WML-content.

Client-side JavaScript and JScript are browser-specific scripting languages, and are therefore not suited to WAP applications. However, server-side JavaScript is perfect for WAP development since it can integrate with back-end databases (using ODBC, and can even be mixed with environments such as ASP).

Whenever a user requests a URL from a web browser or a WAP device, the Web Server attached to the WAP Gateway serving your request will send back a HTTP Header which should include the ability to differentiate the User Agent that is requesting that URL. On this basis, a server-side script can examine this value and then generate WML or HTML, depending on the capabilities of the device.

ODBC is primarily a Microsoft technology, although it is now supported on many other computing platforms, e.g. Macintosh. Essentially, ODBC is a piece of software that enables an application to access information held in a third-party database. Using SQL queries embedded within a script, data can be accessed and then written out as properly-formatted WML code, on-the-fly. The server needs to set an appropriate content type in the HTTP header that prefixes the WML being generated.

In WAP 1.1, yes. Prior to this (WAP 1.0) case did not matter, although for all future development, it will. Ensure that WML tags are all lower case, e.g. <card>. WMLScript is also a case sensitive language (just like JavaScript).

First of all, we have a on-the-fly bitmap creator here at WAPuSeek.com, which is available from your account area. There is also a bitmap library containing hundreds of icons and other small images. The bitmap editor allows you to create bitmaps through use of a pixel grid. There is also a free Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro plug-in here. A Java convertor (PIC2WBMP) is available here.

Another common failure, for some WML pages, is seen when the wapbox log-file read something like "WML compiler: Parsing failed, no parsed document." Here, the libxml parser failed to understand the WML page, for some reason. Either the page is really malformed, or libxml has a problem. use 'xml-config --version' or 'rpm -q libxml', 'rpm -q libxml2', 'rpm -q libxml-devel' or 'rpm -q libxml2-devel' to find out whether libxml is installed on your system at all, and to see which version it is at.

You are using an old Kannel version, you don't have to set a TEST_WML variable anymore. Please upgrade to the latest Kannel version.

Answer: Wireless Markup Language: a simplified version of HTML that is built for portable Internet-enabled devices. WML is built to simplify navigation for users with small screens and limited input devices (probably not a mouse.)

This example shows how to create a link from an XHTML page to a WML deck and vice versa. --------------page1.xhtml--------------- DOCTYPE wml PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD WML 1.3//EN" "http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/wml13.dtd"> anchor>Here <go href="page1.xhtml"/></anchor> </p>

Acronyms make the computer world go round. Things like HTML, DHTML, XHTML; it's enough to make a grown man .....

There are different types of user input, for example to provide text fields for alphanumeric input, use the WML <input> tag. For multi-option selection (a drop-down list), use the <select> container tag. More on this can be found in the developers area.

When a WML deck has been downloaded to a WAP device that code stays stored in the device for a certain period of time, at which time it is expired. During the period up until that code is stored in the WAP device, a request for that same code will result in it being retrieved locally from the WAP device, rather than from the network. This is known as cacheing, and is widely used on the Internet, and by web browsers in particular.

The WTAI standard allows voice-initiated calls to be made from within a WAP application, e.g. from within a WML deck. For example: will provide a WML hyperlink that initiates a call to the ficticious number 1234567890. International numbers must have the initial "+" sign replaced with "00", so instead of using +441234567890 (+44 is the internaional code for the United Kingdom in this case), you would use 00441234567890. Support for WTAI is not universal. The Phone.

The maximum item size is about 1.3 kilobytes binary. This is the maximum size both for a WML deck and for an image. The WML deck and images are downloaded separately.

The concept of events was unique to WML, but (e.g. pete) the "ontimer" event could be replaced with HTTP refresh. WML events can also be used by creating a link from an XHTML page to the WML card containing the event.

The current situation out there is that many WAP applications are highly incompatible and not able to interwork with different mobile devices. This is mainly caused by strong differing browser implementations and network configurations. Starting to program WML means to painfully learn about all those pitfalls one by one and day by day. With HAWHAW, the programmer can rely on the accumulated experience of many running mobile applications.

Author: John Zukowski (http://www.jguru.com/guru/viewbio.jsp?EID=7) Question originally posed by Geeta Shori (http://www.jguru.com/guru/viewbio.jsp?EID=109647 According to the WML Tag Index, there is no APPLET tag defined. However, even if there was, you would be hardpressed to find a browser that supports applets, primarily due to the memory limitations of the devices. Author: Davanum Srinivas (http://www.jguru.com/guru/viewbio.jsp?EID=2011) Question originally posed by kavitha g (http://www.

Simply by typing in a URL, much like loading a conventional web site. Many WAP devices have special URLs that load content directly from the device itself, such as configuration information, or address books etc., although it is also possible to enter a URL of a WML-based resource, for example http://wap.dhl.com, to get to DHLs parcel tracking service.

When you access a HTML document using a web browser, the Web Server tells the browser what kind of document it should expect to get back. This is done using a technology known as MIME (Multimedia Internet Mail Extensions). Your PC will have a long list of "MIME types" stored on it, since there must be a corresponding MIME type for every type of file format (images, sounds, word processed documents etc). This association is made on the filename extension, for example .

See the developers section has many examples of scripts written in Active Server Pages (ASP), ColdFusion, and PHP etc.

XML is a standard that defines the structure of information, rather than the layout of text (like HTML does). WML is based upon XML, from which it derives its syntax. XML has a much stricter syntax than HTML, as you will learn when developing your own WML documents.

Special cases here include the ampersand (&) which should be specified literally as its entity code equivalent, &amp;. Ampersands are used when breaking up URL parameters when sending data from a WAP device to a Web server, for example. If you need access to a dollar symbol ($), use two dollars, e.g. $$ - the first is used to "escape" (remove its significance) from the second. As a rule of thumb, use HTML entity codes when you require any non-alaphanumeric characters.

These phones have no way to handle such data, and so they simply reject it. That's one of the differences between a "feature phone" (like the T68i) and a smartphone (like the Series 60 or UIQ phones).

Answer: Virtually all emulators provide for both local content and requesting remote content. Local content can be accessed as local files, i.e. just like Netscape Communicator or Internet Explorer for HTML files by opening the file from within the browser. Remote and local files can be fetched using HTTP from an HTTP Server on the machine identified by the URL. If using the file opening method index.wml or any other filename will need to be selected. If using the HTTP request index.

Answer: There is no direct link between WML and MMS. WML is a mark up language and MMS is the messaging framework that enables you to send and receive rich content messages between mobile terminals. There is no WML tag that calls MMS functions due to the fact that it creates a potential security risk. Question: What is the correct doctype for WAP 1.2 and WAP 1.2.1? The URL in the 1.2 Spec suggests using: <!DOCTYPE wml PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD WML 1.2//EN" http://www.wapforum.

Answer: Using JSP with WAP is no different to using JSPs with the web. There are some books that cover this well including one my Hoover et al.