The Wireless Application Protocol
The WAP protocol is the leading standard for information services on wireless terminals like digital mobile phones.The WAP standard is based on Internet standards (HTML, XML and TCP/IP). It consists of a WML language specification, a WMLScript specification, and a Wireless Telephony Application Interface (WTAI) specification. WAP is published by the WAP Forum, founded in 1997 by Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, and Unwired Planet. Forum members now represent over 90% of the global handset market, as well as leading infrastructure providers, software developers and other organizations.

WAP Micro Browsers
To fit into a small wireless terminal, WAP uses a Micro Browser. A Micro Browser is a small piece of software that makes minimal demands on hardware, memory and CPU. It can display information written in a restricted mark-up language called WML. The Micro Browser can also interpret a reduced version of JavaScript called WMLScript.

What is WML?
WML stands for Wireless Markup Language. It is a mark-up language inherited from HTML, but WML is based on XML, so it is much stricter than HTML. WML is used to create pages that can be displayed in a WAP browser. Pages in WML are called DECKS. Decks are constructed as a set of CARDS.

What is WMLScript?
WML uses WMLScript to run simple code on the client. WMLScript is a light JavaScript language. However, WML scripts are not embedded in the WML pages. WML pages only contains references to script URLs. WML scripts need to be compiled into byte code on a server before they can run in a WAP browser.

Examples of WAP use

• Checking train table information
• Ticket purchase
• Flight check in
• Viewing traffic information
• Checking weather conditions
• Looking up stock values
• Looking up phone numbers
• Looking up addresses
• Looking up sport results