Application Design for Wireless Computing

Abstract

As mobile computing becomes more prevalent, systems and applications must deal with a growing disparity among resource types and availabilities at the user interface device. Network properties, display size, input method, and local storage are some of the more obviously affected characteristics. Although the challenges of effectively managing these resources are partially addressed by existing systems, their solutions are hindered by the system’s lack of knowledge about application behavior. This, combined with the narrower application domain commonly used during mobile computing, suggests addressing these concerns from the application level. This paper presents strategies for designing applications for a wireless environment, by reducing the demands placed on the wireless network. A World Wide Web client browser is used to illustrate this design.