3. Advantages of XHTML MP

The greatest advantage brought by XHTML MP is that developers can now use the same technologies for the development of both web sites and WAP sites. This benefits WAP application development in the following ways:

• If you are familiar with web technologies such as HTML, XHTML, and CSS, you can start developing your WAP site almost immediately. If you are new to the above web technologies and now you learn XHTML MP, you learn at the same time how to write markup code for the web.

• The same development tools can be used to develop both web sites and WAP sites. You can stick to your web development tools to build your mobile Internet browsing application. This results in a lower development cost (no need to buy new development tools) and a lower time investment (no need to learn new development tools).

• Ordinary web browsers can be used to view your WAP site during the development process. (You should test your WAP site with emulators and real mobile phones before the final release, since the characteristics [e.g. screen size, number of colors supported] of real mobile devices vary considerably.)

• HTML / XHTML pages on your web site can be converted to XHTML MP documents with minor changes or even without any changes. (However, you have to make sure that the layout of the HTML / XHTML pages looks nicely on a small screen and that the file size does not exceed the maximum page size of your targeted mobile devices.)

• It becomes easier to find a developer to join your mobile Internet application development team, since there are plenty of web developers on the job market.

Here are some other advantages of XHTML MP:

• XHTML MP supports WAP CSS, which enables the separation of content and presentation in different files. As you all know, mobile devices have very different characteristics such as screen sizes. The separation of the content and the presentation means you can write the content once, and change the style and layout to suit different mobile devices with various WAP CSS files.

• With XHTML MP and WAP CSS, you have more control over the presentation. For example, you can control borders, backgrounds, margins, padding, etc. You can also specify the font sizes, font families and font colors. Such features are not available in WML 1.x.

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