Arguments Against WAP
Although
WAP has drawn a tremendous amount of attention in the business and
technology sector, its huge popularity also has drawn criticism that
leads one to think that WAP will not develop into a major force
impacting business and life. According to David Rensin, CTO at Aether
Systems, a handheld infrastructure developer in Owings Mills, Maryland,
"WAP is dead." Chief among his complaints was the necessity for
rewriting Web sites in WML for every device a WAP-enabled Web site is
sent to. WML is used as a technique to get content from an HTML Web
site using WAP to small-screen devices. "You have to rewrite the same
Web site for a four-line cell phone display and again for an eight-line
display," and "the problem [with WAP] is content. Redoing a Web page
for multiple sites on different devices is a nightmare," according to
Rensin. [8]
Handheld devices are more limited than desktop
computers in several important ways. Their screens are small, able to
display only a few lines of text, and they are often monochrome instead
of color. Their input capabilities are limited to a few buttons
or numbers, and entering data takes extra time. They have less
processing power and memory to work with, their wireless network
connections have less bandwidth, and they are slower than those of
computers hard-wired to fast LANs. [9]
Web applications are traditionally designed based on the assumption
that visitors will have a desktop computer with a large screen and a
mouse. A smart telephone cannot display a large color graphic and does
not have point-and-click navigation capabilities. As some analysts say,
these limitations will hinder WAP as the choice for tomorrow's
technology.
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