The drawbacks of these technologies include problems in ensuring consistent layout and presentation of content on different mobile devices, limited variety and quality of content available, and the need to provide and maintain separate content for mobile devices and the PC environment.

But as wireless networks evolve towards high data rates and packet data capabilities, and mobile devices become more capable in terms of the display, memory, battery, and networking capabilities, more versatile content-authoring languages like XHTML (specifically XHTML Basic) are being employed to take advantage of the new opportunities. XHTML provides an integration point for both wireless and wired Internet content.

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The WAP Forum and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommend XHTML as the standard for all Web development for desktops as well as mobile devices, such as handsets. Being an integral part of Internet standards sanctioned by W3C ensures that XHTML will be widely accepted and that it will maintain its viability in the long term. WAP 2.0, the next-generation WAP standard, includes XHTML Basic as the WAP markup language, replacing the WML used in earlier versions. Let's look at the advantages of XHTML for wireless Web development.

XHTML Basic
XHTML Basic is XHTML 1.0 minus certain capabilities, such as frames, which are not relevant for mobile devices given their limited display capabilities. XHTML takes the tags and syntax from the latest HTML version (4.1) and adds modularity and enforces strict adherence to language rules--which are, of course, the basic characteristics of XML. Strict enforcement of language syntax is particularly significant from a wireless applications point of view, as we'll see in a little while.

XHTML provides better content presentation abilities for the smaller screens of wireless devices. This could be a major advantage, considering the lukewarm user response to dull-looking WML content.

WAP 2.0 specifications include XHTML mobile profile for content authoring. XHTML mobile profile basically extends XHTML Basic with modules, elements, and attributes to provide a richer authoring language for resource-constrained Web clients that do not support the full set of XHTML features, like mobile phones, PDAs, pagers, and set-top boxes. (The XHTML Mobile profile provides more information.)
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