Mobile Internet Toolkit

Currently, one of the biggest problems with developing applications for mobile devices is the abundance of competing markup languages. In Japan, for example, the two major service providers for cell phones use different markup languages. One uses WML and the other cHTML. If you want to write a mobile Web application capable of being used by any Internet-enabled cell phone in Japan, you must write two separate applications.

The Mobile Internet Toolkit that can be integrated into Visual Studio .NET provides a way for developers to write Web applications for mobile devices without concern for the underlying markup language the device uses.

The Mobile Internet Toolkit consists of the following enhancements to the .NET platform:

• Mobile Internet Controls Runtime ” A set of ASP.NET server controls that intelligently generate WML 1.1, cHTML 1.0, and HTML 3.2 content for different devices.

• Mobile Internet Designer ” A drag-and-drop user interface that integrates with Microsoft Visual Studio .NET.

• Device Capabilities ” Updates to the ASP.NET browser capabilities for mobile devices.

• Device Adapter Code ” Code that makes it easy to add support for new devices through the extensibility model.

• QuickStart Tutorial ” Code samples and documentation designed to help you quickly develop your own mobile Web applications.

• Documentation ” Technical and language reference guide for building mobile applications.

Currently, the Mobile Internet Toolkit is provided as a separate download at Microsoft's developer site, msdn.microsoft.com. You must download and install this toolkit before you can develop or run mobile applications.