Development of
Wireless Markup Languages
HTML
HTML
(HyperText Markup Language) is the markup language used on the World
Wide Web (WWW). One major goal of the development of WAP is to bring
the World Wide Web to wireless devices such as mobile phones and
PDAs. So, not surprisingly, a lot of features in the markup languages
of the wireless world are borrowed from HTML. That's the reason why
markup languages specified in the WAP standard (WML and XHTML Mobile
Profile) are so similar to HTML.
WML
1.x
WML
(Wireless Markup Language) is the markup language defined in the WAP
1.x specification. It is the first markup language standard for
wireless devices. Before its introduction, major players in the
wireless field such as Openwave, Nokia and Ericsson had their own
markup language. The WML specification was created by the WAP Forum,
which was founded by Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia and Openwave in 1997.
At present, many WAP sites are still using WML as the markup
language.
XHTML
XHTML
(eXtensible HyperText Markup Language) is the reformulation of HTML
in XML (eXtensible Markup Language). The tags in XHTML are the same
as those in HTML. You can consider XHTML as HTML written with the
syntax of XML. XHTML has a cleaner and stricter structure than HTML,
which ease the parsing of a document. This is particularly important
for wireless devices such as mobile phones, since they have limited
processing power. All major web browsers support XHTML. XHTML will
gradually replace HTML.
XHTML
Basic
XHTML
Basic is a simplified version of XHTML. It is designed for devices
with limited processing power and capabilities such as mobile phones,
PDAs, smart watches, pagers, etc. XHTML Basic does not contain XHTML
features that are difficult to support on these devices. For example,
cascading style sheets, frames, and scripting are not supported in
XHTML Basic. XHTML Basic is defined by the W3C
(World Wide Web Consortium).
XHTML
Mobile Profile
XHTML
Mobile Profile is the official markup language in the most recent WAP
specification version 2.0 defined by the former WAP Forum. The WAP
Forum created XHTML Mobile Profile based on XHTML Basic, with the
addition of some elements and attributes from the full version of
XHTML such as <i>, <b>, <small>, <big> and
<hr>. XHTML Mobile Profile supports a simplified version of
cascading style sheet called WCSS / WAP CSS.
WCSS
/ WAP CSS
CSS
(Cascading Style Sheet) is widely used on the World Wide Web to
define how web pages should be presented in browsers. WCSS / WAP CSS
is a simplified version of CSS2 with the addition of some WAP
specific extensions. WAP CSS is defined in the WAP 2.0 specification.
Since WAP CSS is designed for use on wireless devices, CSS2 features
that are unsuitable or unnecessary for wireless devices are not
included in WAP CSS. WAP CSS enables the separation of the
presentation from the content. If you want to change the presentation
details of an XHTML MP page, you just need to modify the style sheet.
With WAP CSS, you can easily change the layout and style of your
XHTML MP pages to suit different user agents.
WML
2.0
WAP
site developers need not to care about WML 2.0. WML 2.0 is created
for backward compatibility purposes and it is not for use by WAP site
developers. To develop a WAP site with the WAP 2.0 standard, use
XHTML Mobile Profile.
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