1. WCSS
(WAP CSS) Introduction
1.1. What
is WCSS (WAP CSS)?
WCSS
(WAP Cascading Style Sheet or WAP CSS) is the mobile version of
cascading style sheet. It is a subset of CSS2 (the cascading style
sheet language of the World Wide Web) plus some WAP specific
extensions. CSS2 features and properties that are not useful for
mobile Internet applications are not included in WAP CSS. WAP CSS is
the companion of XHTML Mobile Profile (XHTML MP). Both of them are
defined in the WAP 2.0 specification, which was created by the former
WAP Forum (now the Open
Mobile Alliance [OMA]). There are lots of
WAP2.0-enabled cell phones on the market currently.
The
idea of CSS is simple -- the style and layout information of a
document is defined with CSS style rules and they are placed
separately from the document's content (for example, the style rules
are stored in an external file). To change the look and feel of a
document in a browser, you just need to modify the CSS style sheet.
This feature is very useful in the wireless world in which different
mobile devices such as cell phones have varied characteristics like
screen size. You can control the layout of your documents on
different mobile devices by making use of separate WCSS cascading
style sheets and there is no need to modify the content file.
In
WAP2.0 mobile Internet applications, XHTML MP is used to specify the
content, and WCSS is used to describe how to present the content in
WAP browsers. You may want to read our XHTML
MP tutorial if you want to learn XHTML MP.
Before
the coming out of WAP 2.0, developers used WML (the markup language
defined in the previous version of the WAP specification, that is WAP
1.2.1) to build WAP sites, and HTML/XHTML/CSS to build web sites. Now
with WAP 2.0, you can make use of the same technologies to create
both web sites and WAP sites. Documents written in XHTML MP/WCSS are
viewable on ordinary PC web browsers, since XHTML MP and WAP CSS are
just the subset of XHTML and CSS.
Note
that WML does not support cascading style sheets.
1.2. MIME Type and File
Extension of WCSS Files
The
MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) type of WCSS is text/css
and the file extension is ".css". These are the same as
that of web CSS.
2. Wireless CSS and
Wireless Profile CSS
You
may have come across the terms "Wireless CSS" or "Wireless
Profile CSS" when reading articles about mobile Internet
applications development. Actually WCSS, WAP CSS, Wireless CSS and
Wireless Profile CSS are just different names of the same thing and
they can be used interchangeably (WCSS, WAP CSS and Wireless CSS are
more frequently used).
Note
that the W3C
(World Wide Web Consortium) has also specified a
cascading style sheet language for mobile devices called CSS Mobile
Profile. W3C CSS Mobile Profile and WAP CSS are two different
specifications and they are not the same.
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