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The 'WBA-FC' Wap
Site
What is
WAP?
WAP stands for Wireless Application Protocol. That means it's a
system that allows people with wireless devices (phones, personal digital
assistants etc) to get access to web-like material.
What You Will
Need
Once this service is up and running you will need one of these
phones to access the "WBA-FC.COM" ' WAP Site:But don't worry if you dont have
one as you can still view it by:
VIEW THE WBA-FC WAP
SITE BY CLICKING HERE
| Various WAP
Enabled Phones to get WBA-FC.COM whilst on your travels |
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AAll the major networks (Orange, One 2 One, Vodafone and
Cellnet) support WAP
If you own one of
these of these phones the address is http://www.tagtag.com/wba-fc/
What's on the
'WBA-FC.C0M' WAP Site?
The contents of
the WAP site are:
Baggies News Headlines
Last Baggies Result - Match
report
Current League Position
Squad details and profiles
Away Travel
Routes
To stop your
phone bills going through the roof these pages will contain shortened
information from the 'WBA-FC.COM' site, just enough to keep you going until you
get home.
| The WBA-FC.COM guide to WAP |
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1. So what is the WAP thing then?
WAP- is short for Wireless Application Protocol. So what does
that mean? Well, basically it is a method of letting a wireless device, usually
a mobile phone, view Internet pages, using text only, and very simple black and
white pictures. Naturally, it isn't quite as simple as that. The web site has
to be specially designed for the WAP phone, and the pages have to be fairly
small as the data speed on mobile phones is a lot slower than on domestic
modems. Also, all the phones will have screens of different shapes and sizes,
so pages will look different depending on the phone your are using.
2. What is
the WML thing then?
WML, or Wireless
Markup Language is the language that WAP sites are written in. Fortunately, it
is very similar to the HTML language used to write ordinary web sites. There
are some differences; it is very simple, with no nested tables, very basic font
control, and the pages have to be quite small so that they do not take ages to
download. To get technical for a moment, WML, is a part of the new XML language
which is being developed to make web sites more interactive and easier to
design, but that doesn't actually affect you if you want to write a WML
page.
3. How long is WAP going to be
around?
Well, that is a difficult one.
Firstly, while it is true that mobile phone data speeds will get faster, that
will take several years to begin, and even then not every one will upgrade to
the new systems. So, on that premise, WAP will be around for a minimum of four
years, which in the Internet world, is a massively long time! Also, web
browsers for the PC, such as the one your are using now, will soon come with
the ability to view WAP pages, so you won't even need a WAP enabled mobile
phone. Opera are already about to release such a browser. And finally, it
doesn't cost a lot to put WAP into a mobile phone, and prices are falling all
the time, so it is expected that by the third quarter of this year, almost all
new mobile phones sold, will be WAP enabled.
4. How Do WAP Phones Connect
To A WAP site?
Each WAP phone needs to
connect to what is known as a WAP gateway. These are computer boxes that act as
the doorway between you and the Internet. Usually, your mobile phone company
will have a gateway, but other companies are coming with their own ones, we
have a list of WAP gateways on this web site for you to try out. Some mobile
phone companies will only let you visit sites that they approve of, which is
why independent gateways are a good idea. But back to technicalities when you
visit a WAP site, your phone sends a request to the WAP gateway. That then
sends a request to the WAP site for the page you want to view, when the WAP
gateway has a copy of the page, it compresses it and sends it back to your
phone, where it is expanded and displayed. As with the normal Internet, the
speed is often down to how busy the site is, and how busy the Internet is in
general. The gateways also vary in how good they are at compressing a page. As
some phones might reject a WAP page that is getting close tothe size limit, you
can sometimes end up with the odd situation that a page will work on one
gateway or phone, but not on another.
5. I need to know more, where
can I find it?
There are lots of good
sites that can tell you more about WAP, but the main one is going to be
WAPForum - the governing body for WAP.
6. Is WAP
secure?
Well, it depends on what you are trying
to do. For day to day use, WAP is as secure as the mobile phone standard that
your phone works on. As that will be probably be GSM, CDMA or TDMA, it is
basically very secure against eavesdropping. If you were interested in
m-commerce, buying plane tickets, for example, over a WAP phone, then it is
fairly secure. The signal from your phone to the WAP gateway, and from the WAP
gateway is totally secure, as secure as a normal e-commerce web site. However,
there is a moment at the WAP gateway, about a third of a second, when the
information is not encrypted, and in theory, the owners of the WAP gateway
could print off your information. From a banks point of view, that is not
secure enough, but for day to day use, giving your credit card details to a WAP
site should not be any more of a problem than handing it over to a waiter in a
restaurant.
7. Will a non-WAP phone ever
be able to see WAP pages?
You are
probably thinking, no way! Actually, it will be possible. The companies that
manufacture the SIM cards used in GSM and TDMA phones are working on a new SIM
based WAP browser. It won't be as fully featured as a normal WAP phone, but it
will offer a basic WAP service. As most phones will be WAP enabled by the end
of the year, within two years, we would expect that to die out, but it does
offer a cheap way of getting the WAP service if you did not want to change your
phone.
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