 "It’s All In The Cards!"
For those of you who have done any sort of application development, you know there’s a whole bag of tools and tricks you must have to accomplish the job. But, let’s start with a very basic "web page" for wireless. First off, when creating WML files for wireless, they aren’t called "web pages", or even "pages"! They are called "cards". When you come to a point where you need to take to the viewer to further information (like a link), you create another card, and so on. As you build this, you inevitably create a "deck". So, what does it take to build your "deck of cards"? Let’s find out.......
 "Creating WML Files; Hit and Myth"
A deck of cards (which we now know are simply WML files) are what begins to build our wireless applications. You’re probably already familiar with many "typical" applications of WAP-enabled devices such as simple messaging, checking email, and surfing the web. Maybe you’re even fortunate enough to work in an environment that also lets you do things like transferring files, remote monitoring, and even accessing a remote LAN. But, do you know about some of these other applications currently in use:
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Sales Force Automation
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Remote POSs
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Vehicle/Asset Tracking
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Document Sharing
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Audio
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Video (in color!)
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Home Automation
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Chat
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Mobile Commercing
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Affinity Programs
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Pretty snazzy stuff! This in itself, certainly dispels the myth that cell phones are only good for playing phone-tag with your buddy, eh? Since we’re on a roll, let’s just correct a few other myths about WAP and WML right now........
By now you probably have an image in your head of all the special tools and software, not to mention the hardware it must take to make this stuff work. This is where WML is largely misunderstood!
MYTH: You need a wap-enabled/Net-ready cell phone to test and/or view your WML files.
MYTHLESS: The only hardware you really need is your computer! Oh sure, it would be cool to see your work on your own phone, sitting in the palm of your hand. But you don’t really need a Net-ready phone! Once you’ve developed your WAP files, there are a number of "emulators" out there to test your files with. These emulators are simply nothing more than a software program, that runs on your computer. It looks and acts just like a cell phone!
Emulator: Reads WML like a cell phone!
MYTH: I don’t have the time to learn a whole new language!
MYTHLESS: You can create WML pages quickly and easily! WML is very similar to HTML. It’s simple in that there are no nested tables, carries very basic font control, and the cards you create are very small (short and to the point). And though, it may not directly pertain to you, WML is a part of the new XML language that’s been created for more web site interactivity and ease of design. To better understand how WML looks, let’s get "technical" for a minute here (don’t worry....it’s still very simple):
A very basic WML file consists of 2 sections: the Header and the Body.
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HEADER: As with any HTML file, your header is going to make claim to the document type and definition. (For more information on this, you can access the very useful web site: www.wapforum.org.)
BODY: The body of your WML files are flanked open/close, just like HTML. So, for WML we would have: <wml> ... </wml>
Inside the body, you’ll have at least one (maybe more) <card></card> tags. This captures the information to be shown in the phone. The advantage here is many "decks" (screens) of data can be downloaded in just one WML file! It goes without saying that this makes for a much more efficient application.
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With this tidbit of information, we can now build a simple WML template:
<?xml version="1.0"?><!DOCTYPE wml PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD WML 1.1//EN" "http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/wml_1.1.xml">
<wml>
<card id="maincard" title="Our first card">
<p align="center">
coolmapians are the coolest!
</p>
</card>
</wml>
From the source above, we would see:
This is what we’d see on our
wireless device, or emulator screen!
Just plain cool!
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