XHTML Mobile Profile

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XHTML Mobile Profile (XHTML MP) is a hypertextual computer language standard designed specifically for mobile phones and other resource-constrained devices.

It is an XHTML document type defined by the Open Mobile Alliance. XHTML-MP is derived from XHTML 1.1 Basic Profile by adding XHTML Modules, with later versions of the standard adding more modules. However, for certain modules, XHTML-MP does not mandate a complete implementation so a XHTML-MP browser may not be fully conforming on all modules.
The XHTML MP 1.1 DTD the current recommendation, finalized in October of 2006. Work on the 1.2 DTD continues but a release date is not yet known.

1 DOCTYPE
2 MIME types
3 Versions
4 Supported Modules
5 Development pitfalls
6 External links

[edit] DOCTYPE

To validate as XHTML Mobile 1.0, a document must contain the following Document Type Declaration, or DOCTYPE:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD XHTML Mobile 1.1//EN"

"http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/xhtml-mobile11.dtd">

[edit] MIME types

The MIME type for XHTML Mobile Profile is "application/vnd.wap.xhtml+xml". Conforming user agents should also accept "application/xhtml+xml" and "text/html".

[edit] Versions

Version 1.2 added form and object support. Version 1.1 added full scripting support intended to be used with ECMAScript Mobile Profile. Version 1.0 extended XHTML 1.1 Basic Profile with certain presentation elements and basic scripting support.

[edit] Supported Modules

Modules included in XHTML-MP 1.2 are:

Structure
Texts
Hypertext
List
Forms
Basic Tables
Image
Object
Metainformation
Scripting
Style Sheet
Style Attribute
Link
Base

XHTML-MP 1.2 also includes partial support for:

Presentation
Intrinsic Events
Legacy

Finally, version 1.2 includes an OMA-specific module ("Text Input Modes") for dealing with the various input modes allowed on mobile phones.

[edit] Development pitfalls

Many problems arise when content written in XHTML is shown on different devices. Some will honor colors specified in CSS while some will not, some will render tables properly while others won't, just to mention some examples. Building an adaptative application means delivering different content to different devices, according to their capabilities. This can bring huge complexity, given the number of different devices in the market with different hardware (screen-sizes, coloring capacity, buttons, memory and speed) and browsers.

Many software initiatives present their solution to this problem. Most of them provide a proprietary language to write WAP content, which will render different content (XHTML-MP, WML, CHTML, etc) according to the requesting device. One free initiative is WURFL, which basically uses a hierarchical XML configuration file to map the device's capabilities.