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WAP Bashing
Tube writes "There's been allot of WAP smack these days, some kicking of the WAP dog when he is down, and even some spitting in the eye of WAP, but it's still moving forward. The Wireless Section of DeveloperWorks is running a feature that tells you where it is and where it's going. XML and WML 2.0: XHTML is giving WAP the fuel to keep it righteous." The feature has some good points; but I still find WAP to be almost entirely useless to me, compared to how it was supposed to have walked my dog, cooked dinner, dry cleaned my t-shirts, cloned me, traded currency derivative and played bridge well. Ah, well, I suppose that's an issue more of hyping then the actual protocol.
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.
Oddly enough I was just trying to access /. through a wireless card in my iPaq. Although in the FAQ, CmdrTaco claims that if I visit the site in a WAP compliant browser, I should see a WAP version of the page, it just doesn't happen. And the regular page is too busy to read on a small screen (in fact, scrolling is extremely slow). Instead of the auto-detect feature, I like what WebTender is doing...they have a seperate URL for WAP browsers, wap.webtender.com. Using a seperate URL in conjunction with an "autodetect" feature seems to be the best way for a site to go.
I have a wap phone (a siemens s35i) and I must say, ehre in the Netherlands I have found the wap phone quite handy. It enabled me to check if there were any traffic jams on the roads, wether the trains were on time (no!) and it was also very handy to keep up to date with the news, especially in the light of the recent tragic events.
The protocol was great (is great) for sending messages that you don't care if anyone else sees.
The two main problems I had with it were 1) the devices it was used on tended to have screens just slightly larger than my thumb - which again is perfectly fine if you want to send and display a message that says "you suck balls" to your friend in LA, but if you want to render out a page, then it looks god awful and you have to use short words. and then 2) it isn't secure at all, and it is slow... I guess that's really 3 there.
I work for a company that sells telcom software and I was given the task of porting an entire e-commerce site over to WAP - in about 2 weeks - which I did. but it was total idiocy - the number of forms and pages you had to go through was stupid and then it wasn't secure.
the only real good use of it was if you registered on the web via a computer, and then wanted to do small updates to your account via your handheld (buy more mins, recharge a pin, see your bill status).
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
When is Slashdot going to be available on WAP anyway? Is it already? It hasn't come up on my phone when I've tried.
It would be nice to get the list of headlines and be able to select the headline I want to see the main story. Reading through comments could be more tedious, but doable with a little UI work.
WAP is a great way to check your E-mail on the road too, if you don't have a PDA to hook up to.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Trading currency derivatives is one place, at least, where WAP has succeeded. Check E-gold[e-gold.com] for their WAP client[pcs.e-gold.com]. This allows you to do E-gold spends and also check your account from a PCS or WAP enabled phone.
I was impressed when I saw that, as I had previously thought WAP was simply vapour.
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
However, it never got past the demo stage, I think because banks were worried about upsetting the card companies. It's a shame really, I thought that could have been a killer app for WAP.
I-Mode looks a lot better. Check out this Wired article from last month.
Hmmm..
Since I run my own domain, it should be easy for me to write pages that allow me to check my mail remotely through WAP if I ever get one of those things. Right now I just ssh into the home lan and use pine.
But I don't even own a regular cell phone, nor do I want to, so I guess it's a moot point...until I get a truly wireless palm that can also use standard 802.11 so it can hop on my network at home, and not use somebody else's network...
Wireless 'net access won't really take off until phones start offering real web browsing with, like, actual HTML support. But once that happens, people will realize that HTML isn't ideal for this, and little by little sites will start offering WAP-optimized versions to improve the user experience a little on small devices. WAP will take off only once it is no longer required to access the web on a mobile. At least, that's my prediction :-).
(Suggestion: use some proxy such as Betsie to bash ordinary web pages into a form suitable for small devices.)
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
My problem with WAP is the daggoned flaming hoops I have to go through to develop WAP applications. For example, the Palm . Yes, you get the emulator up-front and free. But to make the emulator useful, I have to sign up for Development Resources Seeding Program to get ROM images. This includes snail mail, as exampled in the e-mail they sent me:
If you did not download the legal agreement in PDF format, please do so now by returning to the signup page in the Provider Pavilion. You must sign and return TWO (2) copies of legal agreement. (Faxes will not be accepted). Please allow 2 weeks to process your documentation.
So unless I've got a burning project, forget about doing this stuff as a hobby, or in my case, for a charity I'm involved with. I'll just go install some Open Source groupware product with minimal WAP capabilities.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
The most prevalent application for WAP is porn... My goodness, how desparate are these people for sexual gratification that tiny 1-bit images of nekkid women gets them off?
I have a Nokia 6210 and I've hardly used WAP at all. Except for one thing.
:)
I go to football matches (that's soccer to you Americans) with my Dad every weekend, and it's great to be able to stand in the middle of the stadium and find out the scores from all the other matches in the league at half-time and full-time. Everyone around me always listens in while I read the scores out.
Previously we used to have to find someone with a radio while we were leaving the stadium, and strain to hear what was going on, and make sure we didn't lose them in the crowd. This is a big improvement on that, and it's a really killer feature of WAP. The only problem I can see is that because everyone wants to know the scores at the same time, the one decent WAP scores service gets slashdotted at 4.45 every Saturday afternoon!
--
Karma: Chameleon (you come and go)
WAP isn't just stupid, it's a bad thing: At it's core, it's very important to recognize that WAP is nothing less than an attempt to replace all open standard Internet protocols with proprietary (and not particularly well-designed) W-equivalents.
There is absolutely no reason why standard HTML, HTTP, and TCP can't work in the wireless world - WAP is a waste of time and money, these protocols aren't necessary today (except for terminally crippled cellphone browsers that people generally refuse to use), and as handheld devices gain more compute power, they start to need the real protocols anyway, so WAP is more of a hindrance than a help.
Oh, and there's that whole ugly proprietary problem, too.. Sadly, WAP is the OSI of this decade. It too will yield to the unstoppable juggernaut of open Internet protocols, but not before countless millions of dollars and man-hours are spent trying to force another bad idea on the world.
If you're not familiar with OSI, go back and read about it - OSI was a suite of "elegant" protocols (as opposed to the crude but effective IP) that most of the academics and digerati viewed as "the right way" to do networking in the 80's and 90's. There was one problem they overlooked: IP worked well and was interoperable, OSI could claim niether of these attributes. Marshall Rose has written that OSI can be quite instructive in illustrating the way things should NOT be done.
I think the same is very much true of WAP. The death of WAP, when it finally comes, will be a good thing.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
I never hated WAP, like most people. I just saw it as a cheap easy way to get essential information. Perhaps WAP will get overtaken by some other protocol - so be it. For now it gets me the daily news when I'm on the bus or the John.
.gone days of lower budgets. Imagine you have a bunch of sales people and representatives who need data in the field. Usually these people will use laptops which somehow have to be online through a network/mobile/phone - whichever way is a hassle - booting up the laptop, finding plugs, waiting to connect.
However, one use is particularly useful right now, in these
With WAP it's a breeze. Not if you need excel sheets or word documents, but if you just need numbers it is. Server-side WAP is a piece of cake to install, so all you need is a few scripts online which generate WML with the data your employee needs, and there he has it. The big advantage is that this is such a cheap solution, which before would require a laptop or access at the clients place. Now you can have your info within a couple of minutes without the need for wires and batterymunching laptops.
HOWEVER, as I understand, WAP was designed with location-based services in mind, and when that becomes a reality, WAP will kick ass.
-Kraft
Live and let live
Check out the amazin WAP porn site "XXXpics" using the tagtag emulator.
Too funny....
-Kraft
Live and let live
Previously we used to have to find someone with a radio while we were leaving the stadium,
Are your stadiums shielded against radio waves? Here people have been going to the stadium with a miniradio in their pockets for years.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
When is Slashdot going to be available on WAP anyway? Is it already? It hasn't come up on my phone when I've tried. It would be nice to get the list of headlines and be able to select the headline I want to see the main story.
I don't mean to sound like a wag, but it should be fairly easy to roll your own WAP Slashdot headline deal. Here's how I would do it.
perl -MLWP::Simple -e 'getprint "http://slashdot.org/slashdot.rdf"'
Of course, I don't know squat about WAP, so all that is just off the top of my head...
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Jakob Nielsen went to DemoMobile and he says "Last year, most start-ups based their systems on WAP phones, but virtually all presenters now see WAP as a doomed technology. Think of the hundreds of millions of dollars that could have been saved last year if the VCs had bothered running a WAP usability study."
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Umm... wasn't the whole point of WAP to address those latter two issues?
>>>
There's been allot of WAP smack these days, some kicking of the WAP dog when he is down, and even some spitting in the eye of WAP
PR: After much consideration, we've decided that the WAP 2.0 technology should reflect current market and reputation, therefore the resolution was accepted with a majority, and WAP 2.0 shall be named WACK!.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
"allot" - to parcel outa ll ot
a %2 0lot
http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=
"a lot" - to a very great degree
http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=
ShoutingMan.com
...is 'cos generally it's on 'devices' with tiny little screens. Not many people's idea of web browsing involves screens which can only manage about 6 lines of text - and yes, I'm one of the few who've actually tried it.
Basically it's like surfing on a lolly-pop stick.
insignificant sig
I still don't see what the 'big deal' with WAP is. I mean, hell, go back a decade, and we had this great little thing called 'gopher'.
Plain and simple thing is, it worked. Then people put out clients like 'TurboGopher' which would launch external apps, so you could view pictures. Then someone came up with this 'HTML' concept, where we could make whole pages of pictures.
Shortly after, we end up with 'NCSA Mosiac', and then that parasite 'Mozilla', hogging 4 simultaneous connections for each page request. Shortly after, some prick comes up with the 'let's sell the crap I make in my garage' concept, and we end up with folks buying up every '.com' address (back in the days when it was $100 for 2 years), and businesses suing them to get the domains with their name in 'em, so that they can try to sell more crap that we don't want.
All the while, people give up on usenet, and move towards 'message boards' like this thing I'm posting on right now, and they trade in IRC for ICQ and AIM, and their muds for MMRPGs [which well, compared to some of the decade old muds out there, was a massive step backwards].
So...in the end, you have to ask yourself... is WAP solving a problem that anyone actually had? For the most part, nope, it's just that people have forgotten about that great thing called gopher, which well....worked.
WAP will probably come and force all new kinds of traffic on the internet, so that the folks still trying to post on message board web pages that WAP, IM and MMRPGs are sucking down all of the bandwidth, so they're lagging while trying to post. {Just like I did, when I'd bitch about damned web surfers wasting bandwidth while I'm trying to mud)
um....for those who can't tell -- I'm mostly joking...the real reason that WAP sucks is the same reason that HTTP sucked in the early days, and why people kept using gopher -- gopher was better organized. It took folks like Yahoo [which now sucks ass] and Digital [altavista] to come up with some good ways of finding information.
It's going to take some better marketing, and some user interface testing for folks to realize that we don't want to take 10 min and click through 20 some pages to get someone's phone number, when we can just call information, and even if we might have been able to do it faster, we don't have the time to dedicate to learn some new system of menus and crap like that. [Hell, I'm getting pretty good at getting through all of the menus to get to my voicemail at work, but it took me a couple of weeks to not use the patterns that I use for my cell phone voicemail]
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I have to admit I've never seen the point myself, though I don't even own a cell phone.
Frankly, I think WAP is a very marginal sort of tool, almost exclusively a vertical-market sort of toy. The Wireless Web in general to me seems like no more than some hacker's toy that accidently made it out to the general public; the point of surfing on a cell phone in the first place just about escapes me, since the screen is too small to do anything useful or interesting apart from playing snake or sending messages.
I do think that there's a place for it, but for the most part it's about as useful as a CueCat.
/Brian
I agree that protocols should be different to accomodate intermittent connections, but WAP went way overboard in thier approach. If they had only set out to provide a more reliable datagram delivery layer, thet wouldn't have been so bad.
WTP is better, but is it enough better to justify adding a terribly proprietary and unproven protocol as part of the infrastructure? Probably not, especially since the reliability of the underlying wireless transport can reasonably be expected to get much better in the 3G world we'll actually be using this stuff in...
HTTP is simply a poorly designed protocol, period. Wireless or not, it's an ungainly pig. (The Gopher protocol is a much better design, and there were those of us pushing for it or others as alternatives to HTTP when Mosaic first came out. It was quickly too late, though, and we've been stuck with a turkey ever since.
And WML, as you state, is pretty much without any redeeming qualities whatsoever...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
This post is a karmawhoring rip-off! The proof is here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=6429&cid=95196 2 a post I made over a year ago when the opinions expressed here made more sense!
Gah! What's galling is that the karma-whoring worked, the guy got modded up to 4 points anyway! Oh well, no damage done!
A little planning goes a long way...
Well, the Weak Anthropic Principle was never terribly controversial to begin with, and --
--oh, not THAT WAP? Sorry.
Honorary Member of Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Process Servers