What is the difference between WAP 1.1 and WAP 1.2?

Currently the majority of devices and applications comply more or less with the WAP 1.1
specifications. The WAP Forum has released the specifications for WAP 1.2 and it’s definitely
worth noting the differences.

In short, the important new features in WAP 1.2 are as follows. For a description of each feature,
please refer to the WAP 1.2 Specifications. You are also reminded that the The WAP Forum is
the authoritative source for these specifications.

New specifications

*
UAPROF (User Agent Profile) which basically allows the user agent (the browser if you will) a
way to tell the content provider what its capabilities are so that the content can be formatted to
get the best functionality on this particular user agent. Full specs available here.
*
wappush. wappush is a binary SMS that allows the device to show a text and provide a link to
a URL. Service Load also allows the server to send a short WML page to display on the mobile.
*
(..more to follow…)

WML specifications

*
accesskey attribute added to <a>, <anchor> and <input> tags. The accesskey attribute will
allow the user to jump to a specific anchor or input field by pressing a single key.
*
<pre> tag which looks like it didn’t make it into the released version of the specifications. We’ll
assume that it’s identical to the HTML tag which encloses preformatted text.
*
enctype attribute added to <go>. Used to specify how data sent from the browser should be
encoded, either application/x-www-urlencoded or multipart/form-data. For GETs, only the first of
these apply of course.
*
align attribute added to <table> tag. Specifies the alignment of the contents within a table
column with values L, R, C and D for Left, Right, Center and Default.
*
The format of the <input> tag formatting attribute nf has changed from an absolute value to a
range from 0 to n.
*
Character encoding is no longer dependent on what is specified in the <meta> tags.

WMLScript standard libraries

*
URL library now conforms with RFC2396
*
Clarification on how non US-ASCII characters are represented in strings. “Non-US-ASCII
characters must be converted using the character codes used in the native character set.”

WEA Specifications

*
Descriptions of Multipart Messages clarified (see MIME at RFC2045)
o
 application/vnd.wap.multipart.mixed
o
application/vnd.wap.multipart.related
o
application/vnd.wap.multipart.alternative
o
application/vnd.wap.multipart.form-data