WAP Under Fire

Recently WAP ^[?] has come under serious criticism from a wide variety of places... Angus wrote a short piece saying that it'll be replaced. IcesTorm-I sent us an message on an IETF mailing list criticizing the format, and to suggesting that we use open formats like LEAP instead. Even Microsoft rejects the standard. Slashdot has supported WAP (well, kinda anyway) since I got bored a few months ago and slapped it together, and I'd tend to agree that its a crappy standard, but more due to the limitations of the devices that use it. (note: if anyone has a PDA format they're dying for on Slashdot, Send diffs -- not requests! We're working on some PDA formats, but there are only so many hours in the day, and we don't have devices that can do most of the formats users email me asking for). [Updated 7 July 18:25 GMT by timothy] Readers may also be interested in a WAP report prepared by Rohit Khare for 4K Associates, which is probably the most incisive (and one of the most critical) analyses on the topic to be had anywhere.

Comments

Do you really mean WAP?

[cshotton]

One of the problems here is that people are confusing WAP, WML, and HDML. 99% of the time, people say "WAP" when what they really mean is "HDML" or "WML".

WAP is the protocol equivalent to HTTP. WML and HDML are the equivalent of HTML. When most people say their Web sites are "WAP compatible", what they mean to say is that they serve up "WML or HDML formatted content."

For instance, does Slashdot REALLY run a WAP server/gateway, or do they just have some of their content in HDML (or WML) format, a la the RSS version?

Most content providers could care less about (and don't need to care about) WAP. It's not their problem. The cell phone manufacturers and the PCS service providers are the only people that have to care because they have the only devices that need to talk "WAP". Everything else is just gatewayed HTTP requests for WML or HDML content.

So what is it that people are really complaining about? WAP or WML?

Well suited to the job at hand

[Ratface]

The most common criticisms I tend to hear about wap are of the "Who wants to use the Interent with 4 lines of text" variety. Very few people know what they are actually criticising when it comes to the questions of
* What is WAP intended to do
* How does it differ from HTML and
* How will it improve in the future.

In my view, WAP is pretty well designed, but it's still early days yet. At it's simplest level, WAP is designed to be a method of presenting content to mobile devices, using the Internet as a carrier medium (my viewpoint). It differs from HTML in that it is a highly slimmed-down markup language, based on XML and including support for various phone functions, such as clicking a link to dial a phone number.

The more interesting part is perhaps where it will go in the future. Many people point out that it won't take too much extra computing power before your PDA can present HTML as well as a desktop browser. This is all well and good, but it doesn't take into account the extra funtions that are planned for WAP such as location based services, phone functionality etc. These are things that have no place in HTML, so a separate language of some sort is probably the best way to go.

Personally, I'm investing quite a lot of personal time in WAP with my wap search engine at http://wapwarp.com and a wap developers mailing list http://www.wap-dev.net (hop onboard if you are interested in discussing WAP development with other developers). I am not scared though to imagine that it will be replaced in the future with another standard.

However it's gonna take a bit for me to hop off the WAP bandwagon. I need to see handsets that support any replacing standard and I need to see a widespread buzz that will attract developers and investors.

Whatever the case, WAP is certainly helping bridge the gap between the stationary net and the mobile applications of the future - and that is what's so damn exciting about WAP.


"Give the anarchist a cigarette"