E-Books: Webmaster’s Guide to the Wireless Internet

E-Books: Webmaster’s Guide to the Wireless Internet
Everything You Need to Develop E-Commerce Enabled
Ryan Fife
Wei Meng Lee
Dan A. Olsen Technical Editor

Wireless Web Sites
Step-by-Step Instructions for Authoring a Web Clipping Application
Complete Coverage of ASP.NET’s Microsoft Mobile Internet Toolkit
Extensions
Master Wireless Security, Including Embedded Security Technology,
Secure Air-Connect Technologies,Mobile Operator Network Security,
and Authentication

Over the past several decades, advances in computing technology have created widespread changes in the way that the world operates and the means by which we deal with information. Computing has revolutionized the way that business is done, bills are accounted for, and how records are stored.The invention of the underlying sets of protocols to enable communication between computers in the early 1970s and the advent of the personal computer in the 1980s, has helped to sow the seeds for the most recent communications revolution—the Internet. In the mid-1990s, as the World Wide Web matured to include graphics and multimedia components and more and more individuals gained access to affordable computers and Internet accounts, the popularity of the Internet exploded and the number of Web sites and people online grew at an exponential rate. Since then, many Web sites have come and gone and use of the Internet is something that many people in the United States take for granted. In the case of individuals whose livelihood is enabled by the Internet, suchas Webmasters, it is something that we cannot live without.

We have also seen, over the past two decades, widespread adoption of mobile devices that are capable of enabling communication. Cellular phones are now being used by millions of individuals worldwide, and, in some areas, mobile phones are more reliable and used more often than land-based telephone communications systems. Recently, many phones and other handheld devices now have the ability to access the Internet and send messages between subscribers.These capabilities often include e-mail and the ability to send and receive data via the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), although not all of these devices can view the type of HTML that has been associated with the World Wide Web of recent years.The advent of ubiquitous mobile Internet computing promises to be another revolution in the ways that human beings interact with each other, manage information, and interact with data applications.This revolution also promises a new landscape in which Webmasters may apply their skills and learn some new ones.

One common characteristic that most handheld wireless devices share, regardless of the device category, is a relative lack of processing power, memory, and display capabilities as compared to a desktop computer.Wireless networks, in addition, feature a mere trickle of bandwidth compared with a modem, let alone a DSL or T1 connection. It is very important to keep these constraints in mind as you build your content and applications.

Furthermore, your wireless users will most likely be accessing your Web site while they are mobile.This fact makes it imperative for you to consider the needs of a mobile user as you consider what types of content you should make available, or what kinds of applications make sense for a mobile user. Also, your user interface should take into account the small viewpoint of the devices that will be accessing your Web site and should also consider the difficulty that often exists with user input on these devices.

Webmaster’s Guide to the Wireless Internet is intended to give you, the Webmaster, the skills and knowledge that you will need to add wireless Internet capability to your existing Web site, to build new wireless applications, and to help you understand the issues, both global and domestic, that exist with deploying wireless Internet solutions.

The primary geographical focus of this book is the United States, but Webmasters in other countries will certainly find the information useful.Webmaster’s Guide to the Wireless Internet is not a lengthy work on the wide variety of protocols that are used to deploy wireless technologies, nor does it focus unnecessarily on the minute details of emerging technologies that are volatile in nature and constantly changing. Rather, it focuses on hands-on examples that will allow you to adapt your existing skills in HTML and server-side scripting to deploy content and applications to a wireless audience using WML,WMLScript, and, in some cases, lean HTML.This book is intended to demystify the wireless landscape and provide you with answers on how to get your wireless Web site up and running quickly.

Chapter 1 covers the basics of what makes up the wireless Internet, and how it contrasts with the World Wide Web.
Chapter 2 covers the basic architecture of the wireless architecture and provides a comprehensive overview of the components of the wireless Internet and how they fit together.
Chapter 3 explains the nuts and bolts of the Wireless Markup Language, the client-side, XML-based markup language that allows devices using the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) to display Internet content.This chapter will give you an understanding of how this language differs from HTML and will give you the skills to start building your own wireless content.
Chapter 4 explains how to add client-side scripting to your WML pages.
WMLScript is loosely based on ECMAScript, which is the language that gave rise to both JavaScript and Jscript. Users familiar with these scripting languages will notice a similar syntax and structure, but the means of deployment will differ. Depending on the market in which you want to deploy your content, you may or may not be able to make much real-world use of WMLScript.
Chapter 5 explains how to install and use the many Software Development Kits (SDKs) supplied by wireless browser programmers and handset manufacturers to provide you with an emulator and debugger to develop your content or application.
Chapter 6 provides an introduction to the proprietary system that allows users of Palm-powered handheld devices to access content located on the Internet.This chapter will give you the information that you will need to start building Web Clipping Applications (WCAs).These special HTML-based applications can be integrated with local applications or interact with Web servers located on the Internet.
Chapter 7 explains the issues surrounding usability on wireless devices.This chapter will help you build effective small-viewpoint navigation and give you some handy tips on how to make your wireless site more user-friendly by working within the constraints of narrow bandwidth and limited user input.
Chapter 8 will give you information and guidelines on how to add wireless capabilities to your existing Web site and choose content that is of interest to mobile users. It also covers how to detect wireless devices and discusses the issues surrounding automated or on-the-fly conversion of your content for wireless users.
Chapter 9 explains how you can use the Microsoft Mobile Internet Toolkit and Mobile Web Forms to deploy content to a wide variety of devices using the same code. It covers how you can maintain state during a wireless or Web transaction and how you can integrate Microsoft’s ActiveX Data Object (ADO) technology to provide interfaces to your data to many different devices.
Chapter 10 discusses the technology used to provide secure transactions for wireless devices and covers the issues surrounding security as it applies within the wireless landscape. Point-to-point and end-to-end security models and the various pitfalls surrounding both models are discussed.
The wireless revolution, like any revolution, is not without its challenges.The global market for wireless Internet technologies is highly diverse, with different rates of adoption, competing protocols and technologies, and existing infrastructures that are in some cases more economical to use in the short term than building a new global wireless communications architecture. At present in the United States, thereexists a fragmented landscape of telecommunications companies that offer mobile phone service and not all of them are yet capable of offering wireless Internet access (but most are). In Europe, standardized networks and compatible handsets have
enabled the wireless Internet to become popular very quickly. Asia has seen similar growth in the use of the wireless Internet, most notably in Japan with NTT/DoCoMo’s iMode system. Many individuals in these markets find that the wireless Internet is an indispensable part of their lives, while the U.S. market has been slow to adopt the technology.There are many reasons for this, including legacy handsets, widespread Internet access via personal computers, and a telecommunications market that features competing incompatible protocols and technologies.
This book, while comprehensively covering the technologies that already exist on the wireless Internet (and the general principles behind them), does not attempt to address developing technologies that are not yet deployed.There has recently been much speculation and hype about so-called third generation, or 3G networks, which are “just around the corner.” In addition, handset manufacturers have promised many new developments in wireless technology, and, in particular, location-based services.

These dreams, at the time of this writing, are not yet a reality.
However, the wireless Internet is up and running and more subscribers join in every day.The future certainly promises to be interesting, and Webmaster’s Guide to the Wireless Internet holds much value for Webmasters who wish to add the ability to develop wireless-accessible Web sites to their toolkit.The first step to the future begins today, and we can only expect that the number of mobile devices that are capable of accessing the Internet will grow as time progresses. It’s your job to make sure that there is something worthwhile for individuals to access on the wireless Internet, and this book provides the hands-on examples and explanations that will allow you to do so!

—Dan A. Olsen
Technical Editor and Contributor

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