Slashdot Mirror
WAP Forum Adopts XHTML For WAP 2.0
earache writes: "This story at Infoworld.com talks about how the WAP forum is moving away from WML and adopting XHTML as the markup of choice for WAP 2.0."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Whoever wrote this at InfoWorld clearly wasn't at the WAP Forum. The consensus has been for over a year to get rid of all the stuff that was reinvented and use standards instead where appropriate; examples of this include replacing the WSP/WTP/WDP stack with wTCP. But this is the first I have ever seen about replacing WML, and I am very sceptical that it will happen in WAP 2.0.
Sure, there has been workshops on XHTML regularly at the Forum, and there's lots of interesting discussion, but give me a draft spec and some rally around it, and then I'll start believing it's going to happen.
Right now I don't. Not for WAP-NG, anyway (commonly branded WAP 2.0, although that version number decision lies with a committee).
There's tons of different interests trying to rubberstamp lots of different technologies as part of WAP. This is half politics, half paperwork diving, and 10% technology. Over 600 member companies are trying to further their own business interests by influencing the WAP Forum. The result can only be described as... well, look at any parliament and you'll see the same effect in operation.
XHTML may be interesting for now, but WAP-NG is going to throw away the reinvention and stick to standards where available, not add new unknowns.
so this is certainly a very important step to integrate mobile devices which have some kind of "internet connectivity" with the rest of the online community Until now wap seemed to me like more or less useless but hip thing. Were I live (Austria) all 4 major mobile phone providers are allready offering confentional wap service(portals, the ability to read news horoscopes and such, integration with outlook, etc.) but still i haven't seen one application which made me think: "hmm, This could actually be useful. Of course it would be nice to read e-mails "on the run" but for those purposes i would use something like the nokia communicator or my notebook. It's just *painfull* to read a e-mail on a cell phone display. Also the 9600 baud which gsm offers right now aren't exactly what i imagine(even though 9600 are certainly enough for telent and such) for real mobile internetaccess. GPRS and finally UMTS(when i finally becomes a useable technology(which some people like Nicolas Negroponte doubt) will hopefully solve this problem. My personal opinion is that WAP will not only be moving toward "normal* internet standards but will become obsolete once bandwith and mobile devices will allow users to just mobile connect to "the internet", maybe with small modifications(screen sizes for websites and such) but still without a seperate protocol like WAP.
"Mommy, mommy! The garbage man is here!" "Well, tell him we don't want any!" -- Groucho Marx
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
"We welcome 3G". How much ya wanna bet this guy doesn't even know what 3G stands for, much less what 2G and 1G even were. These buzzwords are starting to give me headaches. I think that marketing drones are under the assumption that as soon as you give something a TLA (Three Letter Acronym) it becomes significant.
I'm sure the new WAP is going to be useful, but come on, is it really news that it should use TCP? The XHTML stuff seems cool though, it'd be good to have a lingua franca. (See, even I'm doing it; at some sub-concious level, I give XHTML more credibility because it's a FIVLA).
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
However, BTCellnet's Short said there are some practical reasons for taking this "walled garden" approach. That approach makes it easier to ensure security, control spam e-mail, carry out billing, and account for use of the content provided, Short said.
Security is achieved through the right measures in the first place, not by limiting what the client can access. Spam control has nothing to do with limiting the phone to a few selcet information portals. Billing should be easy at the outrageous charges that exist, even if they switch to a bandwidth based instead of time based billing system. Billing for content use is a revenue model that has already proved unacceptable for general internet users, what makes them think it is going to work here.
At least they gained a clue regarding WAP vs XHTML.
I guess I'll buy one when it works right, not how they want it to work.
Bleh!
The only device I will find usable will be one that has enough color depth and pixel resolution to display normal HTML pages. Heck, the palm pilot does a pretty good job with simple HTML right now.
Work on getting good displays and good bandwith into these devices, not devising dumbed down standards that make an attempt at allowing you to order books in a 50x60 pixel display.
-josh
The range for 802.11 is about 200 ft, maximum. And not only would it be expensive to put a tower every 200 feet, they'd then need it to do VoIP (and I'm not sure how much bandwidth this would use). Then you have to figure the number of people using each tower. I know at LWCE they had about 50 people all pushing the Apple Airport, which was way too many. You'd need a tower for about every 2 dozen people tops, with less than 200 feet between towers. It's not worth it to use 802.11, as you can clearly see.
You're totally wrong.
How will mobile services impact "the entire WWW"? What does censorship have to do with it?
The article mentions that some providers limit what users can access. Not all do. If you are in the market for a WAP phone, ask the provider. If they say, "Yes, you will only be able to access the sites we have bookmarked for you," take your money elsewhere. They are in the business of making money, and money doesn't grow on trees, it comes from your pocket.