Datasheet

WML was an XML - based language and was similar to HDML in that it relied on a card - based
paradigm (as shown previously) and shared very few tags with HTML. Web developers who wanted
to create sites for WAP handsets needed to craft entirely different markup and interfaces, even when
the underlying content was shared with the regular web version of the site. (And unfortunately, the
intolerance of many WAP gateways meant that web developers had to emit absolutely perfect XML
syntax or risk cryptic errors on their users ’ screens.)
The earliest WAP devices included the iconic Nokia 7110 and the Ericsson R320, both released
in 1999 and providing monochromatic access to simple WAP content. Both adhered well to the
specifi cations, supporting simple images in cards, for example, and many pioneering developers
created sites for the devices. Nevertheless, the early hyperbole surrounding the potential of WAP
failed to meet user ’ s expectations: They were unable to “ surf the Internet ” on their mobile devices as
they expected, fi nding that only those few sites that had crafted WML - based versions rendered on
their screens.
Further, the increasing numbers of devices that shipped with WAP browsers over the following years
brought a huge problem of diversity for site owners. Each browser could interpret certain sections
of the WAP specifi cations differently, and the inconsistencies between implementations were
frustrating for a web community that at the time was used to the ease of developing for a single web
browser on the desktop environment.
For these, and many other reasons, WAP failed to gain the momentum that had been expected,
and it did not become the worldwide mobile web platform that many had hoped for. Network
carriers, worried both about the unreliability of mobile sites on the Internet as a whole and keen to
monetize data usage across their networks, often blocked mobile users from accessing arbitrary web
addresses from their phones, preferring “ walled gardens ” of content from preferred partners, which
often ended up as little more than directories of ringtones, desktop backgrounds, games, and other
downloads.
WML underwent a number of revisions before the WAP Forum (which became part of a larger
standards body, the Open Mobile Alliance) specifi ed that WAP v2.0 should use a mobile subset of
XHTML as its markup language. With that came the end of web developers ’ need to develop pages
in an entirely unfamiliar markup and the start of a standards convergence between the modern
desktop web (which was gradually, although not universally, adopting XHTML) and the mobile
web of the future.
Dawn of the Modern Mobile Web
The years 2006 and 2007 were seminal in the development of the mobile web. For several years,
high - end mobile devices in Europe, Asia, and the United States had been gaining relatively high -
resolution color screens and increasingly powerful processors. Together with a widespread rollout
of third Generation (3G) network connectivity, sometimes with fl at rates of data usage, this now
meant that many of the constraints of older devices and networks were now removed, and there
was a decreasing need to rely on “ lite ” pastiches of the Web, such as WAP and i - mode, to deliver
information to handsets. Finally, there was a possibility that much of the regular web could be
browsed, cost effectively, on high - end mobile devices.
A Brief History of the Mobile Web
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