The advent of XML has allowed programmers to handle the
development of web pages in a different way, especially when
utilizing the potential of XSLT stylesheet transformations.
Designing for Growth; Designing for Change
A major challenge of developing for mobile devices is dealing
with the difference between the relatively static content
format and rapidly developing presentation formats. The
XML/XSL combination can help you to deal with multiple client
devices, from the Nokia 7110 to the next generation of PDAs.
Our solution was to use XML for all our content, allowing us to
use industry standard grammars as they appear. We also used
stylesheets to transform the XML into the optimum WML for the
particular client device. This allows us to deal easily with new
devices as they appear, and to maintain our services to legacy
devices with the minimum of coding overhead.
Have we met our Goals?
We wanted to write scalable, secure, WAP-based, distributed
applications that delivered business value.
We aimed to understand how to structure content with WML, and
how to implement security using WTLS and LDAP. Another thing that
was important to us was gaining a general understanding of the WAP
industry and market.
Our ultimate aim was to deliver to the user an intuitive UI with
access to dynamic, timely and meaningful content that was
sufficiently secure to protect the confidentiality of the
information.
How we Fared, and what we Delivered after Two Months
We initially underestimated the challenge of designing for a
device with such limited presentational capabilities. Initial menus
proved difficult for users to navigate, and were replaced by a
simple, clear design with shallow menu structures and the minimum
of user clicks.
We used LDAP/JNDI to authenticate users, but we did not
implement end-to-end security or use WTLS in the first phase. We
did, however, manage to deliver a working prototype that accessed
the business information, and generated dynamic content based on
information stored in a back-end data store.
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