From 4abcce013c9ee3053badf2abda77190233066676 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Mitja Felicijan Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2024 10:35:22 +0100 Subject: Testing thoughts page --- _posts/2021-12-30-wap-mobile-web-before-the-web.md | 203 --------------------- 1 file changed, 203 deletions(-) delete mode 100644 _posts/2021-12-30-wap-mobile-web-before-the-web.md (limited to '_posts/2021-12-30-wap-mobile-web-before-the-web.md') diff --git a/_posts/2021-12-30-wap-mobile-web-before-the-web.md b/_posts/2021-12-30-wap-mobile-web-before-the-web.md deleted file mode 100644 index 665be0f..0000000 --- a/_posts/2021-12-30-wap-mobile-web-before-the-web.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,203 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: Wireless Application Protocol and the mobile web before the web -permalink: /wap-mobile-web-before-the-web.html -date: 2021-12-30T12:00:00+02:00 -layout: post -type: post -draft: false ---- - -## A little stroll down the history lane - -About two weeks ago, I watched this outstanding documentary on YouTube -[Springboard: the secret history of the first real -smartphone](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9_Vh9h3Ohw) about the history of -smartphones and phones in general. It brought back so many memories. I never had -an actual smartphone before the Android. The closest to smartphone was [Sony -Ericsson P1](https://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_p1-1982.php). A fantastic -phone and I broke it in Prague after a party and that was one of those rare -occasions where I was actually mad at myself. But nevertheless, after that -phone, the next one was an Android one. - -Before that, I only owned normal phones from Nokia and Siemens etc. Nothing -special, actually. These are the phones we are talking about. Before 2007. -Apple and Android phones didn't exist yet. - -These phones were rocking: - -- No selfie cameras. -- ~2 inch displays. -- ~120 MHz beast CPU's. -- 144p main cameras. -- But they had a headphone jack. - -Let's take a look at these beauties. - -![Old phones](/assets/posts/wap/phones.gif){:loading="lazy"} - -## WAP - Wireless Application Protocol - -Not that one! We are talking about Wireless Application Protocol and not Cardi -B's song 😃 - -WAP stands for Wireless Application Protocol. It is a protocol designed for -micro-browsers, and it enables the access of internet in the mobile devices. It -uses the mark-up language WML (Wireless Markup Language and not HTML), WML is -defined as XML 1.0 application. Furthermore, it enables creating web -applications for mobile devices. In 1998, WAP Forum was founded by Ericson, -Motorola, Nokia and Unwired Planet whose aim was to standardize the various -wireless technologies via protocols. -[(source)](https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/wireless-application-protocol/) - -WAP protocol was resulted by the joint efforts of the various members of WAP -Forum. In 2002, WAP forum was merged with various other forums of the industry, -resulting in the formation of Open Mobile Alliance (OMA). -[(source)](https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/wireless-application-protocol/) - -These were some wild times. Devices had tiny screens and data transmission rates -were abominable. But they were capable of rendering WML (Wireless Markup -Language). This was very similar to HTML, actually. It is a markup language, -after all. - -These pages could be served by [Apache](https://apache.org/) and could be -generated by CGI scripts on the backend. The only difference was the limited -markup language. - -## WML - Wireless Markup Language - -Just like web browsers use HTML for content structure, older mobile device -browsers use WML - if you need to support really old mobile phones using WML -browsers, you will need to know about it. WML is XML-based (an XML vocabulary -just like XHTML and MathML, but not HTML) and does not use the same metaphor as -HTML. HTML is a single document with some metadata packed away in the head, and -a body encapsulating the visible page. With WML, the metaphor does not envisage -a page, but rather a deck of cards. A WML file might have several pages or cards -contained within it. -[(source)](https://www.w3.org/wiki/Introduction_to_mobile_web) - -```html - - - - -

Welcome to the Example homepage

- - -``` - -There is an amazing tutorial on [Tutorialpoint about -WML](https://www.tutorialspoint.com/wml/index.htm). - -## Converting Digg to WML - -This task is completely useless and not really feasible nowadays, but I had to -give it a try for old-time sake. Since the data is already there in a form of -RSS feed, I could take this feed and parse it and create a WML version of the -homepage. - -We will need: - -- Python3 + Pip -- ImageMagick -- feedparser and mako templating - -```sh -# for fedora 35 -sudo dnf install ImageMagick python3-pip - -# tempalting engine for python -pip install mako --user - -# for parsing rss feeds -pip install feedparser --user -``` - -Project folder structure should look like the following. - -``` -12:43:53 m@khan wap → tree -L 1 -. -├── generate.py -└── template.wml - -``` - -After that, I created a small template for the homepage. - -```html - - - - - - - - % for item in entries: -

${item.title}

-

${item.kicker}

-

${item.title}

-

${item.description}

- % endfor - - - - -``` - -And the parser that parses RSS feed looks like this. - -```python -import os -import feedparser -from mako.template import Template - -os.system('mkdir -p www/images') - -template = Template(filename='template.wml') - -feed = feedparser.parse('https://digg.com/rss/top.xml') - -entries = feed.entries[:15] - -for entry in entries: - print('Processing image with id {}'.format(entry.id)) - os.system('wget -q -O www/images/{}.jpg "{}"'.format(entry.id, entry.links[1].href)) - os.system('convert www/images/{}.jpg -type Grayscale -resize 175x -depth 3 -quality 30 www/images/{}.jpg'.format(entry.id, entry.id)) - -html = template.render(entries = entries) - -with open('www/index.wml', 'w+') as fp: - fp.write(html) -``` - -This script will create a folder `www` and in the folder `www/images` for -storing resized images. - -> Be sure you don't use SSL and use just normal HTTP for serving the content. -> These old phones will have problems with TLS 1.3 etc. - -If you look at the python file, I convert all the images into tiny B&W images. -They should be WBMP (Wireless BitMaP) but I choose JPEGs for this, and it seems -to work properly. - -Because I currently don't have a phone old enough to test it on, I used an -emulator. And it was really hard to find one. I found [WAP -Proof](http://wap-proof.sharewarejunction.com/) on shareware junction, and it -did the job well enough. I will try to find and actual device to test it on. - - - -If you are using Nginx to serve the contents, add a directive to the hosts file -that will automatically server `index.wml` file. - -```nginx -server { - index index.wml index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html; -} -``` - -## Conclusion - -Well, this was pointless, but very fun! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. -I will try to find an old phone to test it on. If you have any questions, feel -free to ask in the comments. -- cgit v1.2.3