
WAP Wireless Communication: telephony services to digital mobile phones
WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) is an open international standard for applications that use wireless communication. Its main use is to enable access to the Internet from a mobile phone or PDA.
A WAP browser provides all of the basic services of a computer based web browser but simplified to operate within the restrictions of a mobile phone, such as its smaller view screen. WAP sites are websites written in, or dynamically converted to, WML (Wireless Markup Language) and accessed via the WAP browser.
Before the introduction of WAP, service providers had extremely limited opportunities to offer interactive data services. Interactive data applications are required to support now commonplace activities such as:
- Email by mobile phone
- Tracking of stock market prices
- Sports results
- News headlines
- Music downloads
WAP 2.0 is a re-engineering of WAP using a cut-down version of XHTML with end-to-end HTTP (i.e., dropping the gateway and custom protocol suite used to communicate with it). A WAP gateway can be used in conjunction with WAP 2.0; however, in this scenario, it is used as a standard proxy server. The WAP gateway's role would then shift from one of translation to adding additional information to each request. This would be configured by the operator and could include telephone numbers, location, billing information, and handset information.
XHTML Mobile Profile (XHTML MP), the markup language defined in WAP 2.0, is made to work in mobile devices. It is a subset of XHTML and a superset of XHTML Basic. A version of cascading style sheets (CSS) called WAP CSS is supported by XHTML MP.
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