Comment Articles

Basic nature of WAP

Tony Westbrook AnchorDesk

Published: 11 Sep 2000 14:50 BST

Another reason for having dinner on the train is the opportunity it affords to overhear some really intriguing conversations. Many of which cannot be repeated in an open forum such as this.

Last Friday was no exception, I was sat on my own and watched someone with a heavy Dell computer bag get on at Reading and make his way to the restaurant car. He then sat down with an already ensconced father and son.

Our hero was a software engineer working on a WAP portal under control to a very big company. One you might have heard of. One you might have no choice but to pay bills from if you have a telephone line. We'll call him Mr Engineer for the sake of clarity (and anonymity).

After exhausting the usual criticisms of First Great Western, the rip-off price of train tickets and the reliability of the train service in general, talk turned to work. Mr Engineer was very keen to share the trials and tribulations of his job. Especially the issues surrounding the software development of a WAP application he was working on. He explained how WAP had been oversold as 'the Internet on a phone; where really it was an interactive text system, capable of giving you real time information on any number of things." Too right.

He also talked about the key issue of usability surrounding WAP applications. How they should be designed to avoid unnecessary scrolling, reduce the number of key strokes to a minimum and deliver relevant information for each user, rather than making the mistake of thinking quantity of data is the issue.

All very good. Had he stopped his discussion at this point, and got on with his seared salmon starter I would have been highly impressed. How reassuring that the development of a key WAP portal was in the hands of someone so sensible and well versed in usability issues -- so often ignored in the mobile phone world.

But then he went and messed it all up by doing a demo.