[Product-Developers] WAP developments? Anybody?

[Roché Compaan]

On Sat, 2008-09-20 at 08:33 +0200, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> Previously Russ Ferriday wrote:
> > I've been chatting a bit to Hedley Roos of Upfront Systems.  Upfront  
> > created PloneWurfl and are using it successfully. It's not up to Plone  
> > 3.x yet, but probably will be soon.
> > 
> > A client of mine is considering a project that caters to WAP as well  
> > as Web.  I'm interested whether anyone other than Upfront has done  
> > much work in this area. When I asked folks at the DZUG meeting in  
> > Saarbrucken, last week, the response was negative. Is this due to  
> > small sample size, or does hardly anyone care about WAP?  Wapple in  
> > the UK seems to be making some busines out of WAP, so it's not dead yet.
> 
> From what I see WAP is mostly dead, and the few companies I knew focusing
> purely on WAP technology no longer exist.

I can't disagree more and I think you will be surprised by how many
companies do take this technology seriously now. WAP 2.0 is a cut-down
version of XHTML and this makes it a much more approachable standard. It
also makes it very easy to make a version of your site that is better
viewed on devices with less screen really estate.

In our own experience many big local brands (and I'm sure international
ones too) want a WAP version of their site for the very simple reason
that that mobile phones are vastly more powerful and this is becoming an
important communication channel.

You say it's dead, in my opinion it is a booming market and it might
well be worth it for some Plone companies to research it a little bit
just to see how easy it is easy make WAP sites with Plone. If I get some
time in the next three months I'll post some howtos.

-- 
Roché Compaan
Upfront Systems                   http://www.upfrontsystems.co.za