What are the typical development environments available for developing WAP applications?
If you are referring to Integrated Development Environments (IDE) like Microsoft Visual Studio, there is currently no product in the
market that comes close. However, quite a number of development kits by phone vendors provide some degrees of assistance when developing
WAP applications. They are:
- Nokia WAP Toolkit 2.0
- Ericsson WapIDE 2.1
The Nokia WAP Toolkit 2.0 contains the Nokia 7110 emulator as well as a blueprint phone that supports WAP 1.2 Push messages.
In addition, it also provides a development environment allowing you to view information like WML variable values, error messages, etc.
It can also create WML templates. I find the Nokia WAP toolkit to be a helpful tool for the beginning developer.
The Ericsson WapIDE also provides similar functionality to the Nokia WAP toolkit. It also comes with a WML encoder and WMLScript compiler.
These tools can come in handy when you want to check the actual size of the WML WAP binary that the gateway will send to the device after encoding.
My all-time favorite is still the UP.Simulator from Phone.com.
Why is it that my applications work perfectly on the emulators but fail miserably on a real handset?
Ha! This is a very well known problem. At the moment, WAP is still undergoing its growing pains. As different vendors
rush their handsets to the market, each uses its own microbrowser. Even though the WAP Forum standardizes the WAE (Wireless
Application Environment) specifications, current microbrowser implementations stress functionality, rather than display accuracy.
As such, different devices will exhibit a different look-and-feel when your application is run.
Thus, it is important that you test your application on a real handset before you actually roll out your application to the market.
Can I read emails on my WAP phone?
This question has been asked numerous times and it appears at least once a week on the various mailing lists that I subscribe to.
It is important to know that developing WAP applications is somewhat similar to developing conventional Web applications. The
difference in this case is the display medium. On the Web, you use a web browser; on WAP, you use a WAP device. The backend
processing remains the same (of course your backend now churns out WML instead of HTML). Now, to answer this question: yes,
it is possible to read emails on your WAP device provided:
- You have access to a service that provides such functionality, or
- If you are developing a WAP service yourself, you can access your email as long as your applications can use
SMTP to access emails from your mail server.
You can even send emails using your WAP device. If you are running on Windows NT, all you need to do is to install the
SMTP server that comes with IIS and use the Collaboration Data Objects (CDO) to send emails from your ASP application.
But I doubt that anyone would want to send emails through a WAP handset; it is too cumbersome!
How do I get started on WAP development?
Learning how to program is like learning to swim. You can read a lot of books on how to swim but if you don't jump into the pool
and drink some water, you are never going to learn.
In my opinion, the best way to learn is to try out some simple examples. Of course, you have to download an emulator. For the first
time WAP developer, I strongly suggest downloading the UP.Simulator from Phone.com. This is by far the most straightforward no-fuss
emulator that I have used. The download also contains some very useful documentation on WML and WMLScript. It pays to try out all these
examples on the emulator.
Another issue that I nearly forgot to mention: Developing WAP applications is a lot more painful than developing web applications.
This is due to the fact that WML is based on XML, which is rather strict in enforcing the well-formedness of WML decks. Thus, if
you accidentally missed a "/" in your WML file, it is not going to work and you have to deduce, based on experience, the source of the error.
AS the saying goes, practice makes perfect.
That's all for now. If you have questions on WAP that you want to ask, send me an email at lwm@np.edu.sg.
See you next column!
About Our Expert: Wei Meng LEE is the co-author of the upcoming book Beginning WAP: WML and WMLScript (ISBN: 1-861004-58-3),
to be published by Wrox Press. This book will be available in December, 2000. He can be reached via email at lwm@np.edu.sg.
