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Style Guide Overview
Why Specialise?
1
2 Genie Application Style Guide February 2001
• Mitsubishi Trium Usability. These guidelines explain how to create the most usable
application for the Mitsubishi Trium browser. Again, use the Mitsubishi guidelines in
conjunction with the shared feature set guidelines.
• Appendix A provides information on how to distinguish between various browsers.
The information in this document derives from usability tests, knowledge of the capability
of the WML, and testing applications on a variety of phone models and SDKs.
Why Specialise?
The WAP language specification for the Wireless Mark-up Language (WML) can be
variously interpreted, and devices with browsers from different manufacturers exhibit
differences in display and behaviour. Although the WAP Forum is in the process of
refining the language specification, developers have an immediate need for how to build
the best applications for browser phones on the market today. However, browsers interpret
some of the same WML features differently. A main goal of this guide is to help
application designers and developers understand and work around these differences.
A usable application is one that lets users achieve a goal with a minimum of keypresses
and without incurring extensive charges. The most usable applications are written for a
specific browser. “Generic” applications are developed to the “lowest common
denominator”, a subset of WML that works on multiple browser phones. However,
because this subset is quite small, “generic” applications are more difficult to use than
applications customised for a specific browser.
This guide encourages developers to capitalise on the unique features of the Openwave,
Nokia and Mitsubishi Trium browsers. The entire industry benefits from excellent
usability on all devices.
Testing on SDKs
When developing to the features that work on the Openwave browser and the Nokia
browsers, use the two SDKs:
• The Openwave WAP-compatible SDK. The UP.SDK 4.1 can be downloaded from
http://developer.openwave.comhttp://www.developer.phone.com/ at
no expense.
• The Nokia WAP Toolkit. The Nokia WAP Toolkit can be found at
http://forum.nokia.com. In addition to testing the applications on the SDKs,
test the application on the handsets to ensure that it looks right and works correctly.