WAP Advantages and Disadvantages

The following are the advantages of WAP:
● Implementation near to the Internet model;
● Most modern mobile telephone devices support WAP;
● Real-time send/receive data;
● Multiplatform functionality (little change is needed to run on any web site since XML is used);
● No hardware obsolescence.

The following are some of the advantages of using WAP CSS on mobile Internet sites:
● Because of WAP 2.0 (XHTML MP/WAP CSS), web programming and WAP programming converge. Learning WAP programming does not require much effort if you already know how to program the web. Web developers can continue to use their familiar web authoring tools and PC web browsers for building mobile Internet sites. This is one major advantage of XHTML MP/WAP CSS over WML.

● You can have greater control on the appearance of WAP pages with WAP CSS than with WML. For example, you can specify the colors, fonts, background, borders, margins, and padding of various elements with WAP CSS.

● If you apply a single CSS to the whole mobile Internet site, a mobile device will download the CSS only once the fi rst time the mobile Internet site is visited. The CSS will then be stored in the cache and it can be accessed later without connecting to the server.

● The file sizes of XHTML MP documents can become smaller if the layout and formatting information is moved to an external WAP CSS style sheet. A small fi le
size has the advantage of a shorter download time.

● Using WAP CSS has the advantage that the content and presentation can be separated. This means you can:
1. Match the layout and style of the same content to the characteristics of different wireless devices easily.
2. Match the layout and style of the same content for different user agents easily.
3. Minimize the effort to maintain a WAP site. When new mobile phone models come onto the market, you can write new WAP CSS style sheets to optimize the layout of the WAP site on these new mobile phones. The content files do not need to be modifed.
4. Apply a single WAP CSS style sheet to multiple WAP pages. Later if you want to change the look and feel of the whole WAP site, just modify the WAP CSS.
5. Reuse the style code in multiple projects.
6. Remotely divide work — someone can focus on look and feel WAP, whereas others can concentrate on contents.

Some of the disadvantages of the WAP are the following:
● Low speeds, security, and very small user interface;
● Not very familiar to the users;
● Business model is expensive;
● Forms are hard to design;
● Third party is included.

Some of the disadvantages of using WAP CSS style sheets on mobile Internet sites are:
● Different WAP browsers have varied levels of support for WAP CSS. One property supported on one WAP browser may not be available on another WAP browser.

● An external WAP CSS style sheet can increase the time required for a page to be
completely loaded the fi rst time the WAP site is visited because of the following
reasons:
1. The external WAP CSS style sheet does not exist in the cache of the mobile phone at the first visit, which means the mobile phone has to download it from the server.
2. An XHTML MP document and its external WAP CSS style sheet have to be downloaded in separate requests.
3. If you make use of a single WAP CSS file to specify all the presentation
information about the mobile Internet site, the fi le size of the WAP CSS file can be quite large.
4. The WAP browser needs to parse the CSS in addition to the XHTML MP document.

Source of Information : Elsevier Wireless Networking Complete