Tips for the best development tools

Tips for the best development tools

You can develop your WAP pages with Notepad, but as with all kind of development it's easier and faster if you have the right tool at hand.

Waptor 2.3 (736Kb) for Windows fromWAPDrive.A small and easy to use WML editor and viewer for Windows. Some knowledge of WML is necessary.

Mobile Application Development Kit (MADK) (20.6MB) for Windows from Motorola Motorolas free SDK for WAP developers.Includes a phone emulator and a WML development tool.

Wireless Companion (3.2MB) for Windows from yourwap.com.An combined HTML and WML browser.You must have Internet Explorer 4 or Netscape 4 or newer browser installed because the HTML browser uses their engine. You can choose one of the following phone skins: Ericsson 320, 380 or a Nokia 7110.

WAPman (181kb) for Win32 and Palm is a WML viewer for windows. This connects to a gateway, and if the gateway is unavailable then the program don't work.

WinWAP (1.2Mb) for Win32 is the fastest and easiest way to view WML pages without a WAP device. (except for theWapalizer of course). Even if it's version 2.2,it's still a little buggy. All WML decks will display correctly, but sometimes the links don't w ork.

Nokia WAP Toolkit (10.8MB).You must register to download the toolkit, but there is no other way to do this if you are serious about developing and testing WAP sites.

Ericssons WapIDE SDK (5.49MB).The Ericssons SDK are a collection of software for developing WML decks, device designer for creating visual layout of the devices, WML browser, Application Designer and Server Toolset containing perl libraries.

UP.SDK (5.8MB) Phone.com's SDK. By testing your WML decks with different development tools, your are able to filter out most possible errors. The downloadable from Nokia is sometime not enough. If you for example creates a WML deck to large for the gateway, no Nokia p roduct will tell you what's wrong. But this SDK will.

Photoshop/Paintshop WBMP plugin.This plugin is a must have for anyone working with images for WAP. This plugin let you open and save images in WBMP format.

Online WBMP converter. This service gives you the opportunity to upload and convert GIF's and JPG's to WBMP via the browser.

WBMP converter for Win32 Drag and drop converter for Windows. Let you easily converts GIF to WBMP (WAP images).Go to the Nokia web site at http://www.nokia.com/ and download the Nokia WAP toolkit. Then get a WAP browser to use on your computer from http://www.tucows.com

WBMP Wapaint.com allows you to makeyour own real time graphics for your WAP compatible cellular , with the WBMPformat.

Download wbmp (wab, wml, wireless images format) plug-in for Adobe photoshopThis plug-in allows photoshop (and compatible photoshop hosts) to read and write type 0 WBMP. This format is currently used for wireless devices.