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to promote businesses and run commerce across the medium, the Web went from strength to strength,
until by the end of the 1990s, it too was a powerful and familiar concept — at least in the developed
world. With the benefi t of hindsight, and noticing that two complementary concepts — the mobile
phone and the Web — developed so signifi cantly during the 1990s, it seems inevitable that at some point
the telecoms and web industries would consider what it might mean to combine the two platforms.
For mobile networks and phone manufacturers, it meant the attraction of untethering people from
their computers in the same way that they had been from their home telephones. For web and
software companies, reaching beyond the PC meant the opportunity to add hundreds of millions of
new users to the Web. And for users, the idea of being able to access the vast array of information,
content, and services — through their personal mobile device — would be the exciting realization of
yet another chapter from science fi ction. The idea, at least, of the mobile web was born.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE MOBILE WEB
In practice, of course, there was no single epiphany, fl ash of smoke, and creation of a beautifully
crafted mobile web. Although it has always seemed inevitable, it has taken more than 10 years to
reach a point at which you can consider the mobile web to be a rich and compelling reality. But a
short history lesson to understand how we all got here is a useful exercise.
Early Technologies
One of the fi rst companies to pioneer the concept of pull - based information services on a mobile
device was Unwired Planet, based in California. Launched in 1996, the company produced a
system called UP.Link, comprised of a software browser (UP.Browser) that ran on PDAs and mobile
handsets, and a network - side gateway that would aid the browser in fetching and formatting sites
written in the company ’ s proprietary markup language, HDML.
HDML was a card - based system for structuring content, and it bore little resemblance to HTML,
even in its simplest form. The basic principle was that the browser would retrieve a “ deck ” of such
cards, allowing a user to look at a selection of related pages of information without the browser
having to make additional requests to the server. The cards supported textual and basic image
content, and allowed users to navigate through decks with simple links and soft - key anchors; it even
initiated telephone calls.
In the U.S., AT & T ran a packet - switched data network called PocketNet, which was, at the time,
one of the fi rst consumer offerings to provide Web - like access on a mobile device. This service
encouraged many early website owners to experiment with developing HDML - based sites for this
niche U.S. market.
In 1997, Unwired Planet attempted, and failed, to get HDML adopted as a markup standard by the
W3C, which would have been an important step in getting the technology widely used and used
outside of the United States. However, in that year, Unwired Planet joined with Nokia and Ericsson
(which had been developing Web - like markup languages of their own) to form the WAP Forum, a
standards body that would go on to specify WAP and related standards. Much of the early structure
of the resulting WML markup language came from the HDML syntax and concepts, and Unwired
Planet adapted their infrastructure and browsers to support WAP, becoming a major worldwide
vendor of browser and gateway products as a result.
A Brief History of the Mobile Web
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