Knutsford
Photographic Society Knutsford
Photographic Society An introduction for members to WAP and our K.P.S. WML site
First things first....don't worry about all this jargon (WAP, WML and the like). This page on
our site is simply here to tell you that if you (or anyone else
you know) has one of the new breed of mobile phones (etc) which
can also connect to the internet, 
then you can use
that phone (called a "device" in the IT vernacular) to
dial up the internet and get information from the world wide web.
This information is simply displayed on the screen of your phone.
Think of it as surfing on the hoof.
Really - that's all there is to it, and the
Knutsford Photographic Society has got a small but perfectly
formed WAP/WML site that can be accessed by these new ('new' at
time of writing - May 2000) WAP devices. Being a progressive sort
of a club when it comes to this type of thing, we think we were
the first UK camera club to put up a WAP site on the internet. 
As clear as mud? Well, not to worry. Concentrate on the photography and if you ever get your hands on a mobile phone that can also access the Internet, then look us up at : http://www.knutsfordps.plus.com/kpswaphome.wml ............ or use these html version for a seek preview (click on your preference,or try them both!) : "pretty" version / emulation of the real WAP site.
And, in case you were wondering, the content of the WAP version of our web site is very light because you can't fit much into the small screen of a mobile phone and also their download speed is relatively slow, so the less there is to display the better!
If you were really wondering - WAP means Wireless Application Protocol i.e. the mobile phones are wireless (i.e. not connected to a land line) and therefore have to communicate across the airwaves i.e. differently to your usual BT/cable phone at home. Its all very reminiscent of the early days of radio, the "wireless" (all a bit before your webmaster's time!).
WML stands for Wireless Markup Language - which is the 'language' (a bit like French or German) that your webmaster has to use to write content for the KPS WAP site. By writing in WML these mobile phones can read what we've written and display it in English it for the person using the mobile phone on the phone's screen. Its similar to the HTML language that all the 'normal' KPS web pages are written in for PCs to be able to understand.