Mark Wilson I am the creator of TopXML. I am available for international and local (Australia) contracts. I am a Solution Architect/Business Analyst. I have worked in IT in several countries (NZ, Australia, South Africa, UK) building and training teams for government and very large non-governmental organizations. I am ex-Microsoft Consulting Services. I wrote the first book on Microsoft XML published in 2000 called XML Programming with VB and ASP. Most recently I have been building tools for the SEO industry. Ask me for a 37 point SEO health-checkup for your website.
Usability is a term that indicates the degree of
user-friendliness of a system. A usable system is one that
lets its users complete tasks in a reasonably easy way. Assessing
the value of a system's user interface has become increasingly
important with the growth of computer use - so much so that
there is a whole field of computer science (Human-Computer
Interaction, or HCI) that deals with building usable systems.
Building usable WAP applications is not simple. Wireless devices
have many limitations, and the average user of a WAP application is
not technically oriented (and possibly not even used to the
Internet). Finally, the interpretation of WML varies greatly
between devices from different vendors. This poses an extra
challenge to good usability.
If you're a web developer, you might think that this situation
closely resembles the browser war we're still witnessing on the
Web. And you are right.
This paper looks into these issues in depth, and discusses
methods for overcoming some of the problems you'll encounter when
attempting to code or convert applications for use on a variety of
different browsers. This is done with reference to two particular
microbrowser examples:
Ø The Nokia 7110
Ø The Phone.com
UP.Browser
The paper assumes familiarity with the WAP architecture and WML
programming.
