History of RSS

RSS has been released in many different versions.

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The History of RSS

• 1997 - Dave Winer develops scriptingNews. RSS was born.
  
• 1999 - Netscape develops RSS 0.90 (which supported scriptingNews). This was simply XML with an RDF Header.
  
• 1999 - Dave Winer at UserLand develops scriptingNews 2.0b1 (This included Netscape's RSS 0.90 features)
  
• 1999 - Netscape develops RSS 0.91. In this version they removed the RDF header, but included most features from scriptingNews 2.0b1.
  
• 1999 - UserLand gets rid of scriptingNews and uses only RSS 0.91
  
• Netscape stops their RSS development
  
• 2000 - UserLand releases the official RSS 0.91 specification
  
• 2000 - A group lead by Rael Dornfest at O'Reilly develops RSS 1.0. This format uses RDF and namespaces. This version is often confused as being a new version of 0.91, but this is a completely new format with no ties to RSS 0.91

Introduction to RSS

RSS is a method that uses XML to distribute web content on one web site, to many other web sites.

RSS allows fast browsing for news and updates.

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What You Should Already Know

Before you continue you should have a basic understanding of the following:

• HTML / XHTML
• XML / XML Namespaces

If you want to study these subjects first, find the tutorials on our Home page.

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What is RSS?

• RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication
• RSS allows you to syndicate your site content
• RSS defines an easy way to share and view headlines and content
• RSS files can be automatically updated
• RSS allows personalized views for different sites
• RSS is written in XML

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Why use RSS?

RSS was designed to show selected data.

Without RSS, users will have to check your site daily for new updates. This may be too time-consuming for many users. With an RSS feed (RSS is often called a News feed or RSS feed) they can check your site faster using an RSS aggregator (a site or program that gathers and sorts out RSS feeds).

Since RSS data is small and fast-loading, it can easily be used with services like cell phones or PDA's.

Web-rings with similar information can easily share data on their web sites to make them better and more useful.

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Who Should use RSS?

Webmasters who seldom update their web sites do not need RSS!

RSS is useful for web sites that are updated frequently, like:

• News sites - Lists news with title, date and descriptions
• Companies - Lists news and new products
• Calendars - Lists upcoming events and important days
• Site changes - Lists changed pages or new pages

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The Future of RSS

RSS is going to be everywhere!

Thousands of sites use RSS and more people understand its usefulness every day.

With RSS, information on the internet becomes easier to find, and web developers can spread their information more easily to special interest groups.

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WAP Basics

WAP Homepages

WAP homepages are not very different from HTML homepages. The markup language used for WAP is WML (Wireless Markup Language). WML uses tags - just like HTML - but the syntax is stricter and conforms to the XML 1.0 standard.

WML pages have the extension *.WML, just like HTML pages have the extension *.HTML.

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WML Tags

WML is mostly about text. Tags that would slow down the communication with handheld devices are not a part of the WML standard. The use of tables and images is strongly restricted.

Since WML is an XML application, all tags are case sensitive ( is not the same as ), and all tags must be properly closed.

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WML Decks and Cards

WML pages are called DECKS. They are constructed as a set of CARDS, related to each other with links. When a WML page is accessed from a mobile phone, all the cards in the page are downloaded from the WAP server. Navigation between the cards is done by the phone computer - inside the phone - without any extra access trips to the server.

Introduction to WAP

The WAP protocol was designed to show internet contents on wireless clients, like mobile phones.
What you should already know

Before you continue you should have a basic understanding of the following:

* WWW, HTML and the basics of building Web pages
* JavaScript
* XML

If you want to study these subjects first, before you start reading about WAP and the wireless markup language WML, you can find the tutorials you need at W3Schools' Home Page.
What is WAP?

The wireless industry came up with the idea of WAP. The point of this standard was to show internet contents on wireless clients, like mobile phones.

* WAP stands for Wireless Application Protocol
* WAP is an application communication protocol
* WAP is used to access services and information
* WAP is inherited from Internet standards
* WAP is for handheld devices such as mobile phones
* WAP is a protocol designed for micro browsers
* WAP enables the creating of web applications for mobile devices.
* WAP uses the mark-up language WML (not HTML)
* WML is defined as an XML 1.0 application

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. You can read more about the WAP forum at our WAP Forum page.
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.

Visit our WMLScript tutorial to learn more about scripting in WML documents.
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

FAQ about WAP

These are frequently asked question about WAP:

* What is WAP?
* Who is WAP for?
* How does WAP relate to standardization bodies?
* How is WAP related to Internet standards?
* What is the status of WAP?
* What is the future of WAP?

We will try to answer most of these questions. In the meantime read the answers at: http://www.wapforum.org/faqs/index.htm.

JavaScript Browser Detection

Browser Detection

Almost everything in this tutorial works on all JavaScript-enabled browsers. However, there are some things that just don't work on certain browsers - specially on older browsers.

So, sometimes it can be very useful to detect the visitor's browser type and version, and then serve up the appropriate information.

The best way to do this is to make your web pages smart enough to look one way to some browsers and another way to other browsers.

JavaScript includes an object called the Navigator object, that can be used for this purpose.

The Navigator object contains information about the visitor's browser name, browser version, and more.

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The Navigator Object

The JavaScript Navigator object contains all information about the visitor's browser. We are going to look at two properties of the Navigator object:

• appName - holds the name of the browser
• appVersion - holds, among other things, the version of the browser

he variable browser in the example above holds the name of the browser, i.e. "Netscape" or "Microsoft Internet Explorer".

The appVersion property in the example above returns a string that contains much more information than just the version number, but for now we are only interested in the version number. To pull the version number out of the string we are using a function called parseFloat(), which pulls the first thing that looks like a decimal number out of a string and returns it.

IMPORTANT! The version number is WRONG in IE 5.0 or later! Microsoft starts the appVersion string with the number 4.0. in IE 5.0 and IE 6.0!!! Why did they do that??? However, JavaScript is the same in IE6, IE5 and IE4, so for most scripts it is ok.