Oh how we all love buzz words. There is social media and smartphones, tweet and ping, pounds and daps, wap and responsive… the list goes on and on. About that last one though, most people hear “WAP” and wonder if you have some kind of problem talking or if you are saying a real word. The answer is yes, well, sort of- not really a word but an acronym nonetheless and one that does indeed mean something to anyone who owns a smartphone.
WAP refers to Wireless Application Protocol which is the international standard for applications that use wireless communication, such as smartphones that access the internet. WAP design refers to designing website pages for mobile devices like an iphone, ipad or droid. Now, a newer buzz word that basically refers to the same thing is Responsive Design. One would engage in responsive design (or WAP design) if they were looking to create a website for mobile devices. So in basic terms, WAP design = Responsive Design.
Responsive design or as it’s known by technical audiences, Responsive Web Design (RWD), refers to building a web site using W3C CSS3 media queries with a “liquid” kind of layout that adapts to the viewing environment. So an end-user visits a website on their iPhone (holding it sideways) and a website that has leveraged responsive design will fit proportionally in that screen resolution. The site will look nice, nothing will be cutoff, it’ll give you the warm and fuzzies all over. What makes Responsive web design so cool is if that same user were to flip their phone right side up, the website would then reformat to meet the new screen resolution – on the fly. Now that’s sweet!
If you are interested in learning more about WAP design, iPhone app development or any other kind of mobile app design or development, give us a shout! We specialize in native app and wap website design contact us to learn more about what we can do for you.