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So many roads, one standard

by mark dziatkiewicz
March/April 2001

Got your W-M-Ls and X-M-Ls confused with your W-A-Ps and H-T-M-Ls? Protocols and markup languages can be pretty confusing, even for old pros. But you don’t need an enigma machine to break the acronym code or understand the nature of future incarnations of the wireless Web.

Plain and simple, in the future, Internet content destined for mobile devices will be written in XHTML, aka Extensible Hypertext Markup Language. The really sweet part is that all Web content–wireless and wired–eventually will be written in XHTML. It’s the official migration path for HTML on the wired Web, as well as WML and c-HTML in wireless. Ask anybody in the WAP Forum, the W3C or at NTT DoCoMo and you’ll get the same answer. The migration to a single standard for both the wired and wireless Web is a monumental step because building content for the Web–as well as accessing content from it–only gets easier.

But when this will happen and how soon devices supporting XHTML will be available is a different question. And, unfortunately, it’s an important one. Developers need to know which standards to write to and what markup language to write in. Enterprises also are affected because they need to know the implications for their content if wireless access is in the offing.

A good rule of thumb from the experts is to know your market and customer. That means developers need to consider geographic location. Developers targeting North America are best off with HDML because there still are millions of phones that use it and WML phones are just beginning to roll out, says Kathy Simpson, director of the developer community at Openwave Systems Inc.

The story is different in Europe, however, since folks there waited for the full WML specification. An HDML application will be of little use in Europe unless the carrier’s WAP gateway performs a transcoding function to convert HDML into WML.

In the United States, WML is a second option–if the transcoding function is available. Openwave’s gateway does transcoding and its next-generation product will support c-HTML as well, according to Simpson. But not all gateways are created equal, and that brings up an important second rule: Know your wireless operators and which gateways they support.

Gateways and supported devices will vary by operator. Developers need to keep tabs on who is doing what because it directly impacts application development. Devices are especially important to keep in mind, in view of their direct connection to a successful WAP application. People point to i-mode and its tremendous success in Japan, forgetting that subscribers there are willing to pay a bit more for beautiful phones with high-resolution color screens. It is because of these available devices that i-mode services appear to offer far more than WAP.

Developers targeting North America don’t have color to work with though, nor can they incorporate animation because there are no devices that could handle them, says Danny Wyatt, lead developer at Ericsson’s Cyberlab. Developers are dealing with a chicken-and-egg situation: People won’t pay a higher price for WAP devices until they sport enhanced capabilities, but better devices won’t hit the market until carriers are willing to step up and take the risk that their subscribers will buy them. Until subscribers’ willingness to pay matches the carriers’ commitment to provide these features, North America won’t be seeing many devices with color, high resolution screens or animation.

But don’t blame WAP or credit i-mode with an advantage, says Ron Mandel, manager of developer services at Openwave. “It’s not necessarily related to i-mode itself,” he says. “You can do an animated image on a WAP phone today using the existing WAP standards. But it won’t look as cool as on an i-mode phone because it’s not shiny or in color.”

Finally, there is the question of c-HTML and its importance to developers. Officially, AT&T Wireless classifies c-HTML as a bridge technology that ultimately gives way to XHTML. Although AWS is somewhat sketchy with its i-mode plans, Tom Trinneer, vice president of portal strategy at AWS, says that “developers will be able to choose between WML and c-HTML at their discretion.”

Know your audience. Know your operators. And remember, down the road, it’s XHTML to the rescue.

INSET: There’s a direct connection between devices and successful WAP applications.