April 04, 2001, 2:48 PM — Last issue we looked at a WAP editor. Today we look at a WAP browser.
While the CoffeeCup system we discussed last issue allows you to check out the look of a WAP site, the browsing is limited to displaying simple Wireless Markup Language (WML) with WBMP formatted images.
To really see what your WAP sites will look like, you need a real WAP browser. Rather than running up huge cell phone bills with your WAP-enabled phone, you can use a PC-based WAP browser such as M3Gate from JSC Numeric Algorithm Laboratories (http://www.numeric.ru/)
This is a fantastic piece of engineering!
The M3Gate browser interprets WML and the WAP scripting language, WMLScript, and can display images in both WBMP and PNG formats. The latest release also supports secure HTTPS connections, is UNICODE-complaint and supports Western, East European and Cyrillic character sets.
The browser comes with two " skins " -- a cell phone-type interface, and one that looks a lot like a palm-top device. A nice feature is integration with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Netscape, so that when a WML page is loaded, M3Gate is automatically launched.
The product also features a debug mode for developers so that you can examine the internal history stack, variables, and all the other " under-the-hood " stuff.
This outstanding product is freeware and can be downloaded from:
http://www.numeric.ru/m3gate/download/
JSC Numeric Algorithm Laboratories
Molodezhnaya Str., 11 bldg. AVK-Gamma,
141980 Dubna, Moscow region, Russia
+7 (09621) 27018;
