Date: Feb. 27, 2001
Link: http://webreview.com/2001/02_23/developers/index01.shtml
Source Author or Organization: Steve Franklin, WebReview.com

Citing estimates that wireless web clients of various types will soon outnumber LAN-connected devices, this article offers developers tools for deciding how to add wireless support to their sites.

Once the desire to add support for wireless devices has been determined, several requirements of wireless sites should be considered in advance of the design phase, including supporting displays one tenth to one hundredth the size of computer monitors, keeping text blocks short, minimizing data entry, simplifying navigation, and support of the card and deck metaphor. Time is also required to add skill sets such as Wireless Markup Language (WML), Handheld Device Markup Language (HDML), and Compact HTML (CHTML).

A number of strategies for serving the same content to both wireless devices and traditional browsers are discussed; using an Application Service Provider (ASP) or middle-tier transcoding solution to translate content, maintaining separate versions for each type of client, writing server-side code for multiple presentation solutions, and writing a server-side transformation framework.

An overview of the global installed bases of clients speaking HDML, WML, CHTML and Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) is given, using WMLScript sparingly to accomplish dynamic behavior is advised, and use of a robust Integrated development Environment (IDE) is strongly recommended. Several links are offered for software tools and language information.