Glossary

This is a glossary of some of the terms that you will find on this website. The terms are listed in alphabetical order.

Content type

"Content type" is equivalent to "MIME type". See MIME for more details.

Default document

The default document of a WAP / web site is the file to be served if the client requests a directory. For example, suppose the default document of our web site developershome.com is configured to index.html. If a user requests the root directory of our web site, i.e. http://www.developershome.com/, the file located at http://www.developershome.com/index.html will be served to the user. Some other terms that have the same meaning as "default document" are "directory index" and "welcome file".

Directory index

"Directory index" is equivalent to "default document". See default document for more details.

Extensible Hypertext Markup Language

"Extensible Hypertext Markup Language" is equivalent to "XHTML". See XHTML for more details.

Extensible Markup Language

"Extensible Markup Language" is equivalent to "XML". See XML for more details.

HTML

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. It is a markup language used to write web pages. In HTML, a set of tags and attributes are used to describe the various components of a web page. For example, to specify the title of a web page, you use the tags <title> and </title> to enclose a line of text, like this: <title>This is the title of a web page</title>.

Hypertext Markup Language

"Hypertext Markup Language" is equivalent to "HTML". See HTML for more details.

MIME

MIME stands for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions. When a client, such as a web browser, receives a file from the server, it needs some way to determine the type of contents contained in the file so that it can decide how to deal with it. MIME can be used for such purpose. A MIME value is included in the header of the response sent by the server. If the client finds that the MIME value included in a response is, say "text/html", it knows that the response contains an HTML document since "text/html" is the MIME type of HTML files.

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions

"Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions" is equivalent to "MIME". See MIME for more details.

OMA

OMA stands for Open Mobile Alliance. See Open Mobile Alliance for more details.

Open Mobile Alliance

The Open Mobile Alliance is an organization whose mission is to define open standards to support the development of interoperable mobile services. The WAP Forum has been integrated into the Open Mobile Alliance. The specifications for the WAP standard, such as the specifications of WML, WMLScript, XHTML MP and WAP CSS, can be downloaded from OMA's website at http://www.openmobilealliance.org/.

W3C

W3C stands for World Web Wide Consortium. The World Wide Web Consortium is an organization that defined the standards of many important web technologies such as HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, etc. Its website is at http://www.w3.org/.

WAP CSS

"WAP CSS" is equivalent to "WCSS". See WCSS for more details.

WAP Forum

The WAP Forum is an organization founded by Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia and Openwave in 1997. It defined the specifications of various wireless technologies like WML and XHTML MP. The WAP Forum has been integrated into the Open Mobile Alliance.

WAP server

A WAP server is used to host a WAP site. With proper configuration, standard web servers such as Apache and Microsoft IIS can be set up as a WAP server. Some companies have a "WAP server" product that is actually a web server plus a WAP gateway. This confuses the term.

Welcome file

"Welcome file" is equivalent to "default document". See default document for more details.

WCSS

WCSS stands for WAP Cascading Style Sheet or Wireless Cascading Style Sheet. It is the cascading style sheet language defined in the WAP 2.0 specification, which was developed by the WAP Forum. WCSS is a subset of CSS2 (CSS level 2) with the addition of some WAP specific extensions. WCSS enables the separation of presentation and content. If you need to modify the style and feel of a WAP 2.0 site, you just need to modify the style sheet and need not to modify every XHTML MP documents.

Wireless CSS

"Wireless CSS" is equivalent to "WCSS". See WCSS for more details.

Wireless Markup Language

"Wireless Markup Language" is equivalent to "WML". See WML for more details.

Wireless Profile CSS

"Wireless Profile CSS" is equivalent to "WCSS". See WCSS for more details.

WML

WML stands for Wireless Markup Language. WML 1.x is the markup language defined in the WAP 1.x specification. It is used to write WAP pages, which can be viewed on the browser of wireless devices such as mobile phones. Almost all of the time, when people say WML, they mean WML 1.x. WML is the first markup language standard for wireless devices. It was defined by the WAP Forum.

WML 2.0

WML 2.0 is a markup language that extends XHTML MP with WML 1.x compatibility extensions. It was created by WAP Forum for backward compatibility purposes and it is not for use by WAP site developers. To develop a WAP site with the WAP 2.0 standard, use XHTML MP.

WMLScript

WMLScript is the client-side scripting language of WML. It is designed for use by wireless devices like mobile phones. WMLScript is based on ECMAScript (European Computer Manufacturers Association Script), which is JavaScript's standardized version. With WMLScript, wireless devices like mobile phones can do some processing and computation, which helps reduce the workload of the server and the number of requests and responses to/from the server.

World Wide Web Consortium

"World Wide Web Consortium" is equivalent to "W3C". See W3C for more details.

XHTML

XHTML stands for eXtensible HyperText Markup Language. It is the reformulation of HTML in XML (eXtensible Markup Language). The tags in XHTML are the same as those in HTML. You can consider XHTML as HTML written with the syntax of XML. XHTML has a cleaner and stricter structure than HTML, which ease the parsing of a document. This is particularly important for wireless devices such as mobile phones, since they have limited processing power. All major web browsers support XHTML. XHTML will gradually replace HTML.

XHTML Basic

XHTML Basic is a subset of XHTML. It is designed for devices with limited processing power and capabilities such as mobile phones, PDAs, smart watches, pagers, etc. XHTML Basic does not contain XHTML features that are difficult to support on these devices. For example, cascading style sheets, frames, and scripting are not supported in XHTML Basic. XHTML Basic is defined by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium).

XHTML Mobile Profile

"XHTML Mobile Profile" is equivalent to "XHTML MP". See XHTML MP for more details.

XHTML MP

XHTML MP stands for XHTML Mobile Profile. It is the official markup language of WAP 2.0, which was defined by the WAP Forum. The WAP Forum created XHTML MP based on XHTML Basic, with the addition of some elements and attributes from the full version of XHTML such as <i>, <b>, <small>, <big> and <hr>. XHTML Mobile Profile supports a simplified version of cascading style sheet called WCSS / WAP CSS.

XML

XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language. It specifies a set of syntactical rules that can be used to define markup languages. WML and XHTML are some example markup languages that follow XML syntactical rules. XML was defined by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium).