Why I've discontinued all efforts to make small-screen Web pages
How/why I originally started WAP work:
In 2003.Nov I tried leasing a Nokia cellphone using
AT&T wireless service. I had never used a cellphone before
and the offer sounded worth trying. During the time that
I was getting familiar with the various services available over
a cellphone, I tried
WAP.
But the WAP sites that I visited were not at all well designed,
and I was sure I could do better, so
I got the idea of starting a business of
making Web pages suitable for such devices.
I started by
writing some prototype screens including a very terse
login form and a terse format for my flashcard system.
Why I stopped work soon after beginning:
The AT&T service was so cruddy (does anyone really need
to see evidence of how incredibly cruddy AT&T service
really is?) that I cancelled my
contract before the first month was up, so I haven't
had any way to view my Web pages on any such small-screen device
any time since then, making it impossible for me to develop
any new small-screen Web pages.
Lack of any support for continuing:
Since then, not one person has expressed any interest in my work in
this area, and not one person has volunteered to let me
view the pages through his/her handheld device so that
I can debug any ongoing work I do. Meanwhile several people have
posted nasty rebukes saying it's not a worthwhile thing to do,
and nobody has defended me against these rebukes.
Small screen size isn't the only factor:
Also I've recently
learned that WAP includes a way to bundle multiple WebPages (within a
single section of a single WebSite) into
a single download, then browse the various already-downloaded
WebPages on the handheld device without needing to pay for any
additional download time. I think I really need to get access to
that technology and re-vamp my small-screen WebPages for that
feature of WAP before I market my small-screen skills any more.
Conclusion:
So until and unless I can:
- obtain access to such bundled-WAP-pages technology, whereby I can do development in this area, both:
- being able to install my WAP pages on some fully WAP-supporting server so that they can take full advantage of WAP
- having some way to view such pages on an actual WAP device so that I can debug my work myself
- find some likely market for my services
(There's not supposed to be a blank line here! HTML sucks!!)I've decided on 2005.Aug.14 to discontinue all effort to support or develop small-screen WebPages for WAP devices, and
I'll be deconstructiong most of the small-screen WebPages I already have. I'll
keep just the WAP login form and maybe a couple other clean examples.
Link to what's left of old WAP pages being dismantled