| The difference between iMode and WAP is
first of all that iMode uses another markup language. For WAP, the markup language is WML
(Wireless Markup Language) while iMode uses CHTML (Compact HTML). Not to be
confused with "Chunks
of HTML", a phrase related to generating dynamic HTML content. Compact HTML has an advantage over WML in that a
large majority of WML developers come from the "web" world where they are used
to HTML. Compact HTML is a subset of HTML 2.0, 3.2 and 4.0. However, the future of
internet content serving is XML, and from XML the step to WML is hardly noticable. It's
much more noticable with Compact HTML or HTML.
iMode with its markup language similar to
HTML is NOT the WAP killer the media has been waiting for. To be honest both
technologies are in their infancy, and would do well to learn from eachother.
You can read a lot more about Compact
HTML here.
iMode browsers support images in the GIF
format. This is likely to change as the rest of the "web" world is turning away
from the format due to patent problems.
Compact HTML does not support the
following
- JPEG images
- Tables
- Image maps
- Multiple character fonts and styles
- Background image
- Frames
- Style sheets
- <INPUT> buffers larger than 512
bytes
- <SELECT> buffers larger than 4096
bytes
iMode also has a very different set of
protocols, but reliable information on this is not yet available. I'd rather not base this
on rumours. Stay tuned. |
