Wap introduction.

[WAP is] the de facto worldwide standard for providing
Internet communications and advanced telephony
services on digital mobile phones, pagers, personal
digital assistants, and other wireless terminals - WAP
Forum.
WAP stands for W ireless A pplication P rotocol. Per the
dictionary definition for each of these words we have:
Wireless: Lacking or not requiring a wire or wires
pertaining to radio transmission.
Application: A computer program or piece of
computer software that is designed to do a specific
task.
Protocol: A set of technical rules about how
information should be transmitted and received
using computers.
WAP is the set of rules governing the transmission and
reception of data by computer applications on or via
wireless devices like mobile phones. WAP allows wireless
devices to view specifically designed pages from the
Internet using only plain text and very simple black-and-
white pictures.
WAP is a standardized technology for cross-platform,
distributed computing very similar to the Internet's
combination of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), except that it is
optimized for:
low-display capability
low-memory
low-bandwidth devices, such as personal digital
assistants (PDAs), wireless phones, and pagers.
WAP is designed to scale across a broad range of
wireless networks like GSM, IS-95, IS-136, and PDC.
Who is behind WAP ?
The Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is a result of
joint efforts taken by companies teaming up in an
industry group called WAP Forum (www.wapforum.org) .
On June 26, 1997, Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, and
Unwired Planet took the initiative to start a rapid creation
of a standard for making advanced services within the
wireless domain a reality. In December 1997, WAP Forum
was formally created and after the release of the WAP
1.0 specifications in April 1998, WAP Forum membership
was opened to all.
The WAP Forum now has over 500 members and
represents over 95 percent of the global handset market.
Companies such as Nokia, Motorola and Ericsson are all
members of the forum.
The objective of the forum is to create a license-free
standard that brings information and telephony services
to wireless devices.
Why is WAP Important ?
Until the first WAP devices emerged, the Internet was a
Internet and a mobile phone was a mobile phone. You
could surf the Net, do serious research, or be entertained
on the Internet using your computer, but this was limited
to your computer.
Now with the appearance of WAP, the scene is that we
have the massive information, communication, and data
resources of the Internet becoming more easily available
to anyone with a mobile phone or communications
device.
WAP being open and secure, is well suited for many
different applications including, but not limited to stock
market information, weather forecasts, enterprise data,
and games.
Despite the common misconception, developing WAP
applications requires only a few modifications to existing
web applications. The current set of web application
development tools will easily support WAP development,
and in the future more development tools will be
announced.
WAP Microbrowser :
To browse a standard internet site you need a web
browser. Similar way to browse a WAP enables website,
you would need a micro browser. A Micro Browser is a
small piece of software that makes minimal demands on
hardware, memory and CPU. It can display information
written in a restricted mark-up language called WML.
Although, tiny in memory footprint it supports many
features and is even scriptable.

Today, all the WAP enabled mobile phones or PDAs are
equipped with these micro browsers so that you can
take full advantage of WAP technology.