3. Advantages of Using
WAP CSS Style Sheets on Mobile Internet Sites
Here
are some of the advantages of using WAP CSS style sheets on mobile
Internet sites:
Because
of the coming out of WAP 2.0 (XHTML MP / WAP CSS), web programming
and WAP programming converges. Learning WAP programming does not
require much effort if you have already known how to program the
web. Web developers can continue to use their familiar web authoring
tools and PC web browsers for building mobile Internet sites. This
is one major advantage of XHTML MP/WCSS over WML.
Using
WAP CSS has the advantage that the content and the presentation can
be separated. This means you can:
Match
the layout and style of the same content to the characteristics of
different wireless devices easily. For example, if you want the
layout of your mobile Internet site to be different on mobile
phones of different screen sizes, you can design several versions
of WAP CSS style sheets and each version is for a particular screen
size. The content files do not need to be modified.
Match
the layout and style of the same content for different user agents
easily. For example, if you want the layout of your mobile Internet
site to be different on a PC, PDA and mobile phone, you can design
several versions of WAP CSS style sheets and each version is for a
particular client type. The content files do not need to be
modified.
Minimize
the effort to maintain a WAP site. When new mobile phone models
come onto the market, you can write new WCSS style sheets to
optimize the layout of your WAP site on these new mobile phones.
The content files do not need to be modified.
Apply
a single WAP CSS style sheet to multiple WAP pages. Later if you
want to change the look and feel of the whole WAP site, you just
need to modify the WAP CSS style sheet.
Reuse
the style code in multiple projects.
Promote
division of work. For example, one of your team members can focus
on the look and feel of the WAP site and the others can focus on
the content. By separation of duties, it becomes easier to keep the
look and feel consistent across the whole site.
You
have greater control on the appearance of WAP pages with WCSS than
with WML. For example, you can specify the colors, fonts,
backgrounds, borders, margins and padding of various elements with
WCSS.
If
you apply a single cascading style sheet to the whole mobile
Internet site, a mobile device will download the cascading style
sheet only once at the first time the mobile Internet site is
visited. The cascading style sheet will then be stored in the cache
and it can be accessed later without connecting to the server.
The
file sizes of the XHTML MP documents can become smaller if the
layout and formatting information is moved to an external WAP CSS
style sheet. A smaller file size has the advantage of a shorter
download time. (However, this is not applicable to the first WAP
page visited by a user since the external style sheet has to be
downloaded with a separate HTTP request, which means the total
download time may not be shortened as now two round trips are
involved).
4. Disadvantages of
Using WAP CSS Style Sheets on Mobile Internet Sites
Here
are some of the disadvantages of using WAP CSS style sheets on mobile
Internet sites:
Different
WAP browsers have varied levels of support for WCSS. One property
that is supported on one WAP browser may not be available on another
WAP browser.
An
external WAP CSS style sheet can increase the time required for a
page to be completely loaded at the first time the WAP site is
visited because of the following reasons:
The
external WAP CSS style sheet does not exist in the cache of the
mobile phone at the first visit, which means the mobile phone has
to download it from the server.
An
XHTML MP document and its external WAP CSS style sheet have to be
downloaded in separate requests, that is the mobile phone first
downloads the XHTML MP document, then it parses the XHTML MP
document, extracts the URL to the WAP CSS style sheet, and
establishes another request to the server to download it. As a
result, the number of round trips to the server increases.
If
you make use of a single WAP CSS file to specify all the
presentation information about your mobile Internet site, the file
size of the WAP CSS file can be quite large.
The
WAP browser needs to parse the cascading style sheet in addition to
the XHTML MP document.
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