Anyone ever built a WAP site?

[accelerator]

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Has anyone here ever built a WAP site, i.e. a site optimised for viewing on mobile phones?

Is it difficult? Are there any good resources about how to do it?

Many thanks

accelerator

[Tom]

never done it as such, but would be interested in learning more as well. Especially with these new .mobi extensions... I think basically you need to create a site with virtually no graphics and so very small in size, and best if you use strict XHTML.

I think they talk about a lot of theory of this on the w3.org site, might be worth taking a look on there, although I tend to find that site is less practical and more theoretical if you know what I mean.

[Andyc]

Hello,

There is a program which I used - Designed the site on PC uploaded to my webspace, then tested on a mobile and it worked, it was only a basic holding page though, haven't really used it. The program is quite easy to use.

It's called Dot Wap http://www.inetis.com/freeware.asp and is Freeware.

Hope this helps.
Andrew

[Route15]

It really depends how complicated the pages are that you want to put together. Every mobile nowadays can display standard html pages via GPRS without a problem; so long as you keep your html tight and page sizes down. I've had no problems for instance putting very simple pages together for checking site stats etc.

[eskimo]

I built a couple of wap sites years ago, when wap first came out. Back then it was was a stripped down version of HTML with the only images being in a specific format (.wbmp) and there were also huge browser issues.

WAP hasn't really taken off, but I'm intrested in building some mobile content for the new 3G networks, especially as the offerings from my network are particuarily great.

[Darren M]

I remember playing with WAP when it first came out. Static sites were dead easy to put together and dynamic sites weren't too difficult either. Compared to HTML the coding is very strict and it refers to pages as cards.

The main problem with all commercial WAP sites back then was that the navigation was very poor. There was some useful information on some of these sites but in the end people’s patience ran out and the navigation killed it. I've recently tried Orange's location based services and they seem to be a lot better. If you’re going to design a WAP site, get the navigation right or people just won’t use it.

I think the main challenge here is though is figuring out a good way to make money from these tiny, limited sites.

[lowndsy]

Yeah it's dead easy. There is a really good Nokia toolkit/SDK which includes a good development environment similar to the free Microsoft .Net one.

[tigerdom]

Get yourself a back copy of Web Designer (magazine), Issue 105.

They had an excellent article on bulding sites for mobiles phones/PDAs etc. I built one off the back of the article (stick to XHTML and your CSS media should be set to media="handheld"). My little site works a treat now on tiny screens and bigger PDAs!

[carlos]

Further to WAP, I-mode is to release later this year.

A slightly advanced standard of WAP. While some of the features are cool (automated payments and user location lookup) it will I believe only be launched on the o2 network.

With the uptake of mobile technology a wap or advanced wap site is worth looking into (if your site has a function and/or content that is worthwhile).

- Carlos

[andy_jacko]

forgive me if im wrong (cant find my copy at the mo) but this months .net had a few articles and tools for desiging for wap


regards andy

[KGP]

well certaintly imode is the future in mbusiness I myself as an mbusiness consultant -beyond everything else ;-) - i have worked with many companies and websites.

i believe you should opt out for imode standard and you can find relative information on docomo's website.