[thelist] WAP experience?

[Warden, Matt]

> I'm currently investigating the possibilities of WAP sites.
> I'd want to know if any of you have experience with it,
> how it can handle a shopping carts and stuff like that.
>
> I'm searching for info both from the developer's point of view and the
> user's.

As far as functionality goes, you can do pretty much anything in WAP. There
are only a few limitations that are almost always easily worked around.
However, WAP/WML itself doesn't show much promise. Before getting very deep
into WAP and WML, I'd read the words of some of its critics (such as Jakob
Nielsen). I've developed a few sites/apps in ASP and WML. I did the best I
could do make it usable, but was not at all happy with the end result. The
sites ended up much like this email: mono-font, mono-font-weight,
mono-font-size, etc. Boring and quite difficult to draw attantion to certain
words or headings. Plus, the character-per-line ratio is just insane... and
the lack of word wrap on many WML Browsers makes things really scary
(especially when you realize that many developers do not do anything to
force-wrap the outputted text).

It might not be a good idea to try and specialize in WAP, because it might
not be around after a year. Read up on WAP/WML and decide for yourself.

--
mattwarden
mattwarden.com