Cellular phones supporting WAP are slowly, but constantly spreading. Therefore, it could be time for you to start building your WML pages to access internet databases. As such, we will show you how to build PHP/WML pages to access a MySQL database which contains professors' receiving hours and exams timetables for a University. I'm testing a beta service of this kind, prepared with Vitaveska Lanfranchi, at www.scidecom.it.

Wireless Markup Language - you keep telling yourself you ought to learn it but you don't have time what with keeping up with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and everything else you have to learn.

In this column we introduce a special dialect of JavaScript called WMLScript. The WMLScript language is part of the industry-wide standard for wireless applications called Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). The WAP includes one more language besides the WMLScript, the Wireless Macro Language (WML), which is the equivalent of HTML for wireless applications.

The <go> tag has a central role in WML. The user agent can change cards by the tag. This tag can call either a WMLScript function or move to another card of the WML deck. In the following example, clicking the Help option triggers a switch to card card1_help:

To help you validate your wml, we have used The Microsoft's XML parser to create a wml validator. Paste your wml in the text area, and validate it by pressing the validate button.

If you're living in the present day, in one of the thousands of metropolitan and quasi-metropolitan centers to which service has been rolled out, you've probably at some point seen someone with a mobile phone. They're little electronic things, just like the phones our ancestors had — but they don't need to be leashed to a wall! They are mobile!

There are several Usability issues emerging with respect to delivering content to wireless devices. By far the most important of these is the recommendation that User Interfaces must be consistent in order to promote Usability. Consistency relies on standards or guidelines and the presentation of a coherent guideline compliant application. However, with current portal and content aggregation strategies Usability is being sacrificed in order to facilitate time to market.

Wireless Markup Language (WML) is an XML-defined markup language for creating and serving up wireless-friendly information and applications for WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) enabled devices and browsers.

The links in the "Start tag" column points to more useful information about the specific tag. It also cover attributes of the specific tag and code examples.

This Library dynamically translates HTML pages to WML (WAP protocol) pages. WML, which is intended for hand held devices, is different from HTML and introduces a number of conversion issues. The library provides a simple C++ API to read a HTML file and generate an equivalent WML file. If the HTML file is longer than the acceptable WML length, the converter splits the WML file into multiple files and links them together with hyper links.

The WAP protocol is the leading standard for information services on wireless terminals like digital mobile phones. WML is the language used to create pages to be displayed in a WAP browser. In our WAP tutorial you will learn about WAP and WML, and how to convert your HTML pages to pocket format, so that your information can be accessed from devices like mobile WAP phones.

With the explosion in alternative browsing devices, portals need to present more than one representation of their content. Didier Martin demonstrates how to build your own XML-driven portal."

As promised, we return to our HTML/WML portal project to demonstrate creating the WML side of the portal using XSLT, XLink, and XInclude."

HDML is still a widespread language for marking up mobile phone content. Didier Martin introduces us to the differences between HDML and WML, and shows how HDML can be created from XML."

Didier Martin leads us through building a portal accessible by HTML, WML, and VoiceXML. This week's article introduces the project and covers the login process."

Consultant and JSP author Chad Darby delivered a light overview of a hot topic to a packed room at XML DevCon in New York on Monday, "Developing Wireless Applications with WAP, WML, and JSP."

An example of a working site to allow you to access your email via a wireless device.