This week's cooltopic:

All About WAP - Part 1 (page 1)
Article by: The KROW

[Wap Review 1, Page 1]
[Wap Review 1, Page 2]
[Wap Review 1, Page 3]

Introduction To The World of WAP

"WAP, WAP, WAP.....It’s Knocking At Your Door"

With so much in the news about "wireless technologies", the coolfolks at coolmaps thought it might be helpful if we did an article on the development-side of "wireless application protocol" or WAP. So, for the next few weeks, we’re going to do a series about the world of WAP, which will be:

• Article 1 - "Introduction to the World of WAP"
• Article 2 - "The Tools! - Doing ‘Card’ Tricks"
• Article 3 - "Where To Go From Here - If You Build It Will They Come?"

There’s lots to discuss about WAP, and it can get confusing, even for those who’ve been developing it for some time! Our articles are going to help make some sense of it all. We’ll cover information such as:

• Beginner’s Information and Terminology
• The Pros and Cons of WAP
• Latest Tools of the Trade (and many are free!)
• "Sneak-peeks" of Great Things To Come
• And more!

"Without Further A’do......"

First, let’s get a clear understanding WAP:

The technology of WAP is a "hot" topic both inside and outside the "development" community. Understandably, WAP gives us a way to connect some of the biggest industries in the world, such as Net and Telcos, all in one place (like the palm of your hand!). There are so many reasons why WAP is a hot item, we can’t possibly list them all here. But, check out the clue below for a quick list:

Cool KROW Clue
Click for some Pros and Cons of WAP.

"Don’t Worry, Be Wappy"

Because WAP is a protocol, it needs other things to work. There are three major parts to any WAP-enabled system:

• The WAP Gateway
• HTTP Web Server
• WAP Device

Since most mapians are doing dev, we’re going to focus on the "web page" end of WAP, rather than the setting up of wireless network systems. WAP applications are written in Wireless Markup Language or "WML" (we’ll get into that a bit more, later on). Through the help of the WAP Gateway on the HTTP Server, the WML content is able to communicate back and forth between the devices. The pic below may help you better understand how this works:

Our happy WAP phone is now "wappy"..... he can talk back and forth to the web!

You now know of WML, but, what goes on that http server to get it to run the WML? You might check with your ISP or hosting company, as many of them have already enabled their systems to accept WML. Here are some of the most popular mime types you’ll want to make sure you have:

• WML Source: text/vnd.wap.wml wml
• Wireless bitmaps: image/vnd.wap.wbmp wbmp
• Compiled WML: application/vnd.wap.wmlc wmlc
• WMLScript Source: text/vnd.wap.wmlscript wmls
• Compiled WML Script:
  application/vnd.wap.wmlscriptc wmlsc

With these mime types on your server, you’ll be able to do many applications. You could even begin to build a wireless information portal for your clients....complete with graphics and all!

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