WML (Wireless Markup Language) : An Introduction

WML (Wireless Markup Language) is the new web language for making sites on mobile phones. Over the past few months new WAP (Wireless Applications Protocol) phones have become extremely popular and many large websites have created special 'mobile' versions of their site. Many people predict that, over the next few years, WAP sites will become extremely popular and e-commerce over mobile phones will be widly available.

Why Should I Use WML?

Although you might not have any plans immediately for creating a WAP version of your site, it is always a good idea to get involved in new technology. All you need to do is make a small site (even one page) which tells people a bit about your website. In the future you can develop the site further with things like e-mail and information for people to access directly from their phones.

The main sites which will benefit from WAP are ones providing a service like e-mail, live sports scores or a calendar service etc. but there are many other uses. For example, a site giving music reviews could put their reviews on a WAP site. People could then read the reviews on their mobile phone while browsing through the CDs in a shop.

I Don't Have A WAP Phone!

To create a WAP site you don't need a WAP enabled phone. You can get a WAP simulator for a PC. This is a piece of software which will give you a WAP phone on your desktop. You can then type in the URLs of WAP sites and then view them on your PC. You can get a very good free WAP simulator from YourWAP.com

How Do WAP Sites Compare To Normal Ones?

WAP sites are not like standard web sites at all. As an example, you are looking at part of the Gowansnet web site.


As you can see, sites written in WML are monochrome, very limited and there is very little screen space. Because of this you must be very careful when you are designing a WAP site as it is nothing like a web site.

What Now?

Just read on to learn how to create a WAP site using WML. It is a great advantage if you know HTML as WML is a lot like it (in fact WML is just a variant of XML, another web language).

Create your first WAP site!

Let's get straight into how to create a site. Note, a working knowledge of HTML is useful and you should really have either a WAP phone or a WAP simulator to view your site.

Finding A WML Host

Unfortunately WML cannot be run on all web hosts. For WML content to be run, a web host must make some changes to the configuration of their web server. If your host cannot do this for you, you can try WAPHosts.net. They can provide you with a server that will support WML.

Declaring A WML Document

When you are creating a WML document all you need is notepad, just like for HTML. The first thing you should enter is:

<?xml version="1.0"?><!DOCTYPE wml PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD WML 1.1//EN" "http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/wml_1.1.xml"><wml>

this tells the phone that it is interpreting a WML document and which WML standards it is using.

Cards

Instead of having pages, WAP sites have cards. These are what is displayed on the screen at any one time, just like a page. More than one card can be inserted in each WML document. To declare a card, insert the following:

<card id="index" title="My WAP Site" newcontext="true">

This will make a card with the ID index (used for linking) and will display the text:

My WAP Site

at the top of the screen.

Closing Tags

Unlike with HTML, it is extremely important to close WML tags. If you do not, a page will certainly not work. You must close both the <card> and <wml> tags:

</card>
</wml>

Now I am going to show you how to insert text and how to format it.