WAP 2.0

Although Nokias tout their browser as “WML 1.x and XHTML”, one has to wonder about WAP2.0.

After all, people who use XHTML on their phones still call it WAP.

There is an awful amount of confusion.

WAP2.0 in terms of browsing (lets not get into the stack):
* XHTML Basic
* WML Modulized as an XHTML module (Mobile Profile)
* some other WML 1.x extension that couldn’t fit in the module, i.e. WML 2.0
* WCSS or is it CSS Mobile profile

So errr… Nokia’s XHTML browser does what?

The UA Profile? It only tells they’ve implemented XHTML 1.0. No mention of the WML module. Why? It’s because their user agent is dual mode. It comes across WML and it gets done by their existing implementation. Obvious isn’t it? But that wasn’t obvious to who drafted the WML2.0 spec as they threw in all the WML backwards compatibility stuff no web developer is interested in because it makes HTML device dependent. Although I was surprised to see Opera7 implementing WML. But Opera right now isn’t the leading browser and WML is a discontinued language.

So… WTF? The only way as a developer we can figure out what’s going on of course is by tracking the browser user agent. This is easy with Opera, but with Nokia’s browser (the one with huge market share) it is next to impossible. The only version you can really go on is the operating system version. And that’s not consistent and might change though the user agent wasn’t touched.

Welcome to the wacky world of mobile browsing.