1. How do I build a WAP site?

There are several ways; the easiest is to use the free WAP Builder on this web site. We will host your WAP site for you, and you don't need to learn any WML language to build a site, just type in the text you want to appear on the phone display. Another method is to write the WAP page yourself, and you can get away with using plain old Notepad, just like web pages used to be written, before Dreamweaver and FrontPage came along. If you download a WAP toolkit though, you can test your pages on your PC, before uploading them to your web site. Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola and Phone.com all have developer packages that you could use. Once you have created a WAP page, you will need to upload it to a web host that will deliver WAP pages, and not all do. WAPDrive has an FTP service, so you can design your WAP pages on your PC, and upload them to our servers, where we will host them for free on your behalf.


2. What can I put on a WAP site?

Well, anything you want, just like a normal web site can have anything you want, legal of course! One of the great things about WAP is that you can view your WAP site while walking down the high street. There are WAP sites that people have set up with anything as mundane as their daily shopping list, to a full use of the Phone Contacts service on WAPDrive, instead of the phones own memory. Again, by putting the contacts onto a WAP site, you can use any phone to access the names and phone numbers, but also, you could use the Wapaliser on this site to view them from any PC.


3. Is it just text, or can I use pictures as well?

Yes, you can use pictures, but black and white only. Well, actually as most mobile phones have a green background, it is technically black and green! The restriction is twofold; firstly there are very few mobile phones that have colour displays anyway. However, the main reason, is speed, as stated before, the data speed of a mobile phone is quite slow compared to a domestic modem, so pictures take a while to download. Keeping them simple will reduce the amount of time it takes to download them. Don't be deterred though, one of the first ever applications of WAP was on the Paris metro, to offer maps to WAP enabled phones. Some idea of how good a WAP image to display a map can be is below. The maps come from www.webraska.com.

4. How big can a WAP site be?

In technical terms, the largest a WML page should be is 1400 bytes when compiled. "Compiled" means it is compressed by the WAP gateway for sending to the mobile phone. The gateways though vary in how well they compile a WML page, so if your page is close to the limit, then you may occasionally find that it doesn't work on some gateways, or even some phones. Unfortunately, there is no straightforward solution, just test and test again, until you are sure your page is work.


5. I want the same address for WAP and web

Actually there are several ways of doing this. One of the easiest is to set up a doorway to your site, using a free redirect service. A good one is from www.come.to as they are one of the only redirect services to be WAP enabled. With them, you are given an address, such as www.come.to/mywebsite and visitors to that address will be directed to either the WAP or HTML page address automatically. The best thing about this service- is that if your change your web site address, all you have to do is change the divert address that the come.to name will divert to. If you are hosting the WAP site yourself, then it is technical, but basically you need to set up the server to look for a PHP, CGI or ASP program instead of the usual index.html file, and for that program to divert to a WML or HTML page. It is very techie, so we can't really go into it here.


6. Can I use JavaScript on my WAP sites?

No, JavaScript will not work on WAP phones. There is a cut down version, called WMLScript that will work; however, it is beyond the scope of this page to go into detail about its workings, sorry. We hope to have a section on WAPDrive that will explain how to use WMLScript in the near future. However, after registering with Phone.com's Developer site, you may access their reference to WMLScript at http://updev.phone.com/dev/ts/beta/docs/wmlscript/.


7. The Siemens S25 is WAP compatible isn't it?

The Siemens phone was released with the original WAP1.0 standard, which was logical as the WAP standard we use today, WAP1.1 had not been released yet. All the new phones that have come out use WAP1.1 and the Siemens phone has actually been discontinued for some time now. It would be best to consider upgrading the phone if you want to use WAP on a regular basis.