Wireless Web Development

by Ray Rischpater

Overview

Wireless Web Development, Second Edition provides both a substantial engineering and business background to wireless developers, covering numerous facets of wireless web software geared toward today's mobile platforms and mobile devices. Wireless technologies, including wireless HTML, WAP 2.0, XML, Palm's WCA, and i-mode, are discussed in detail, with individual chapters devoted to each. Author and industry veteran Ray Rischpater places special emphasis on the differences between the Web and the wireless Web, and even between wireless devices themselves, helping the reader to better understand the engineering and interface issues that must be addressed when creating wireless web applications.

By providing the latest information about technologies that have emerged since the first edition was published (i-mode, the growing emphasis on XML in wireless, and WAP 2.0), as well as relegating to historical status those technologies that have failed the test of time (Microsoft Mobile Channels and HDML), Rischpater offers readers a comprehensive and completely updated guide to the latest wireless technologies and development strategies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781590590287
Publisher:	Apress
Publication date:	07/31/2002
Series:	Expert's Voice
Edition description:	Softcover reprint of the original 2nd ed.
Pages:	408
Product dimensions:	7.52(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.28(d)

About the Author

Ray Rischpater is a freelance consultant and author with over eight years of experience writing about and developing for handheld computing platforms. During this time, Ray has participated in the development of Internet technologies for J2ME, QUALCOMM BREW, Palm OS, Newton, and Magic Cap, and proprietary operating systems for vertical handheld computers. In addition, he's consulted during the development of websites for wireless devices using HTML and WAP. Ray is a senior software engineer at Rocket Mobile, Inc. and holds a bachelor's degree in pure mathematics from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of Wireless Web Development, Second Edition and Wireless Web Development with PHP and WAP.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 10: The Handheld Device
Markup Language

Although the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is poised to be the world standard for screen phone content, the Handheld Device Markup Language (HDML) remains important in North America, and I recommend you gain at least some familiarity with it.

In this Chapter, I introduce HDML and show you how you an use it to mark up your content for today's North American screen phones and wireless terminals.

Introducing HDML

HDML was the first device-specific markup language available for screen phones. Created by Phone.com, it has been widely licensed to handset manufacturers. Major wireless providers, including AT&T, offer mobile data services that carry HDML, and most North American wireless data handsets in use offer HDML browsers. Unlike the other wireless technologies discussed in this book, the HDML standard is controlled by a single company. While the standard itself is open—anyone can develop HDML content—the direction HDML will take in the future is controlled by Phone.com.

HDML depends on the UP.Link Server, which provides server-side assistance for HDML browsers. The UP.Link Server gates HDML content from the Web to wireless terminals (see Figure 10-1 for a deployment view). As with other server-assisted wireless browsers, the UP.Link Server bridges the gap between media-rich Web content and constrained access devices. It provides network-specific services to the wireless network, converting the wireless protocols to Web protocols and making requests of the servers where the content originates—on the Web or on private enterprise networks.

Fortunately, it's not necessary to know much about the UP.Link Server to develop HDML content. Network providers make a UP.Link Server available and support it for their subscribers.

Developers who set out to learn HDML will find experience with other markup languages helpful. Understanding the Wireless Markup Language ( WML) makes HDML easier to learn at a conceptual level, but knowing the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) well makes HDML easier to write. HTML and HDML tags are written using the same syntax, and some tags are the same in both markup...

Table of Contents

1 A Wireless Data Primer.- 2 The Wireless Landscape.- 3 The Wireless User Interface.- 4 The Wireless World Wide Web.- 5 Server-Side Content Management.- 6 Server-Side Content-Management Scripting.- 7 eXtensible Markup Language.- 8 HyperText Markup Language the Wireless Way.- 9 Palm Powered Web Clipping Applications.- 10 i-mode Applications.- 11 Wireless Application Prool.- 12 Wireless Markup Language.- 13 Dynamic Content with WMLScript.- 14 Content Delivery.- 15 Custom Applications: When a Browser Won’t Work.- Appendix A Resources for Wireless Web Developers.- WAP Specifications.- Client-Side Tools.- Server-Side Tools.- Mobile Software Development.- Appendix B Unified Modeling Language for Web Developers.- UML for Wireless Web Developers.- Further Reading.- Appendix C Handheld Device Markup Language.- Introducing HDML.- HDML or WML?.- Creating Your First HDML Page.- Using Browsers, Tools, and SDKs.- Understanding HDML for Web Developers.- Designing an HDML User Interface.- Summary.

Editorial Reviews

Wireless is hot. The coming ubiquity of handheld net devices and their peculiar and shifting constraints create ample economic opportunity for the clued-in. In terms of technology, wireless development amounts to knowing something about carrier technology, XML-defined WML (Wireless Markup Language) and some other interesting tools of lesser profundity. Real success in wireless, however, also depends on a whole new mindset.

Ray Rischpater, author of Wireless Web Development, has the necessary mindset and a great deal of personal depth in the subject matter. He describes each technology in just enough detail to allow a programmer/designer to evaluate its applicability; but this isn't enough detail to allow the reader to really build a skillset.

You can run through this book and grasp the outlines quickly. In contrast, The Wireless Application Protocol, by Sandeep Singhal et al. (reviewed earlier this year) explores pretty much the same use cases and tool chains, but in greater depth at every step of the way, making for a long read overall.

Unfortunately, Wireless Web Development contains frequent offhanded and unsubstantiated technical assertions that dangle figures like "50% faster." In general, Mark Twain's advice, "Every place you mean to write 'very', write 'damned' instead, then your editor will remove it and everything will be as it ought to be," may apply to all or most of Rischpater's adverbs.

It's not a bad book. Rischpater is a consultant in the field and has written magazine articles. The book's content is reasonably factual and precise. But it is a first book, and is afflicted with a prose style as wooden as Al Gore.

In any event, the spectrum of issues addressed by Wireless Web Development and The Wireless Application Protocol overlap more than not. Rischpater might advise his client that it comes down to needs and economics. The Wireless Application Protocol is stout at $49.95. Rischpater's book, Wireless Web Development, list $34.95, is lite beer.
— Electronic Review of Computer Books

Jack Woehr