Questions about WAP

This section is intended to give you an overview of Wireless Application Technology, what it is and how it may be a useful part of your Internet strategy.

If you still have some unanswered questions please contact us. We will do our best to help you.

What is WAP?

WAP stands for Wireless Application Protocol, a set of standards for applications and services that use wireless networks.

Originally, manufacturers of mobile phones and other wireless devices began developing their own protocols but fortunately, quickly decided to work together and agree a common standard.

What good is it?

There has been a lot of hype about both the capabilities and long-term future of WAP.

It is not the web in your pocket. You can access certain parts of the Internet specifically designed for viewing with wireless devices, Although becoming more affordable, mobile wireless devices currently have limited memory, a small screen size, low data transfer rates and are quite fiddly to use. Also, if you want to use images, you are limited to just two colours. There is also the same problem that you get with web browsers, different devices will display the pages in different ways and they don't all support the same features.

What WAP can do is allow you to serve information to users of a WAP enabled device such as a palmtop computer or mobile phone. Broadly speaking this means that you can offer a trimmed down or alternative version of your web site. It can't have all the graphics and other nubbly bits you commonly find on web sites these days but who needs them anyway? The important bit about a web site is the text.

As to its future, the WAP ball is rolling and it may be difficult to stop. More and more companies are offering WAP users more and more features. As the cost of the devices fall, and data transfer rates increase the user base will grow and fuel the demand for even more and better services.

What can a WAP site offer?

With WAP you can offer your customers news, product information, prices, job vacancies etc., if you integrate the site with a database you can even offer features like on-line booking, ordering and shopping. In short, you can offer just about everything a web site can offer with the added advantage that the visitor doesn't have to be by a computer to access it.

Here are a few examples of WAP sites we have created:

http://wap.jensys.net/. Our own site giving a brief overview of our services.
http://www.bridgepersonnel.co.uk/wap/index.wml. A recruitment site detailing their latest job vacancies.

Be aware though that the 'top end' of the WAP list of features such as secure ordering and booking are quite expensive to implement.

What is WML?

WML (Wireless Markup Language) is the programming language used to write WAP sites. It is fairly similar to HTML.

WML pages differ from HTML (web) pages in that they can contain sub-pages called 'cards'. A WML file comprising of a number of cards is called a 'deck'.

Each card works like a web page so the benefit is that the mobile device only has to download one file (deck) in order to be able to display many pages.

What do I need for a WAP site?

No more than you need for an ordinary web site. The important thing is that the server that hosts the site must be capable of serving up WML files. Our server can, as can most other hosting companies.

You don't need a separate domain name or more web space, once the server is configured you can serve WAP pages from anywhere on your site. Convention dictates you create a sub-domain, e.g. wap.your-company.co.uk, for them but it's not necessary.

Some hosting companies may try and sell you additional space plus charge you a hefty set up fee if you do want to serve your WAP site from a sub-domain. We don't. You can use any spare capacity of the existing space we provide and there is no additional fee for setting up the sub-domain.

Who can access my WAP site?

Anyone with a WAP enabled device. The usual ones are palmtop computers or mobile phones.

If they haven't got one of these they can still access your site by using an emulator. You can find these on the Internet, the Gelon site features one that allows you to choose the phone you wish to emulate or you can use a stand-alone one like the Klondike WAP browser. Slob-Trot Software Oy Ab offer a reasonably priced product called WinWap that acts as a plug-in for Internet Explorer, launching automatically when the browser receives WML content and the latest version of Opera has built in WML support (it's also free, is an excellent web browser with a host of features and well worth getting).

You should note though that using an emulator will not be the same as using a 'real' WAP enabled device.

NOTE: The links above are provided purely for your information. jensys does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services listed.

What is WAP?	What good is it?
What can a WAP site offer?	What is WML?
What do I need for a WAP site?	Who can access my WAP site?