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Step 3. Testing your .wml files

Assuming you have managed to arrange hosting of your .wml files, as described in the previous step, you are now ready to test that they are accessible over the internet. The obvious way you could do this is to just open the page in the WAP browser on your 3510. This is fine as long as everything works, but if there are any problems you will find the phone to be very uninformative with regard to what caused the problem.

The way I would suggest you start testing is to use one of the Windows-based or web-based WAP browsers. These are quicker, have much better error reporting and are also free to use (well, assuming you have free internet access. Even if you don't, the chances are it'll be cheaper than connecting using your phone).

The Nokia Mobile Internet Toolkit

The best place to start is probably Nokia's Mobile Internet Toolkit. This simulates accessing WAP sites through an actual phone, but of course it really runs under Windows.

Link: The Nokia Mobile Internet Toolkit can be found on Forum Nokia. After opening the link, click on "Tools and SDKs" on the right-hand menu, and the toolkit can then be found in the list of downloads under the "Browsing/WAP" heading. You will need to register before you can download it, but registration is free.

Once you've downloaded and installed it, launch the application from the Start menu. The program displays two windows: one looks like a little mobile phone screen and control pad, the other is a larger window containing various tabs and menu options.

Before you use the WAP simulator, ensure that the "Direct HTTP Connection" setting is selected under the "Settings/Connection Profile" menu. Now to test the simulator is working, try to connect to a known WAPsite (for example, wap.google.com). Type the URL into the "Go" box and press Enter. If the WAP site appears then great, the simulator is working. Otherwise you will need to have a look through the online help to try to find out what's wrong.

Once you're up and running, it's time to access your .wml page. The way in which you do this will depend upon whether you are using an ISP to host the file or your own computer with IIS.

To connect to the file on an ISP:

Just type in the address (e.g., www.mysite.com/test.wml).

To connect to the file on your own PC:

You will first need to find the IP address of your computer. This can be done as follows. For Windows 95, 98 or Me, click the Start button and select Run. Type in "winipcfg" (without the quotation marks) and press Enter. For Windows 2000 and XP, click the Start button and select Run. Type in "cmd" (without the quotation marks) and press Enter. In the command window that opens, type "ipconfig" (without the quotation marks). For all operating systems you should now be looking at a window that will list the various internet addresses your computer uses. For each connection, one line will be labelled "IP Address". This is the value you need to enter into your web browser. If many IP Address values are listed and none of them obviously belong to your internet connection, you'll need to try each in turn. To connect, enter the IP address instead of a domain name, and then the path to your .wml file (for example, http://100.101.102.103/test.wml). Each time you reconnect to the internet you will need to repeat this procedure, as the address will probably have changed.

Once this is all done, you will hopefully find that your .wml file has displayed within the Nokia browser simulator window. If any problems occur, you can find more details from the "Session" tab on the main Toolkit window. Some common problems are as follows:

"Can't connect to the web server"
A problem occurred trying to access the WAP server. If you are hosting the .wml files on your own computer, ensure that IIS is running by checking in the Internet Services Manager window. Also check that you have entered the correct URL.

"Object not found (404)"
The WAP server responded, but the .wml file you tried to access could not be located. Ensure you have entered the correct URL.

"Content type 'text/html' is not supported by this device simulator"
The web service was found and responded, but it returned an HTML page instead of a WML page. If you click on the Settings tab, you will be able to view the actual HTML that was returned; sometimes this will be a message from the server that may help you to understand what is causing the problem.

One possible cause of this is that the mime-types for .wml files are not set correctly. If you are hosting the site on your own PC, check the configuration exactly matches that described in the IISFAQ site (see above) and try again. If you are using an ISP to host the files, that may mean that your ISP doesn't allow .wml files to be returned. You will need to contact your ISP to see if they can be persuaded to add support for this file type.

If things aren't working for you at this point, you have some research to do in order to find out why not, and what you can do about it. Good places to post your questions are on the Forum Nokia website, and in appropriate selections from the following newsgroups:

alt.cellular.nokia
alt.internet.wireless
microsoft.public.inetserver.iis

Hopefully someone in one of these areas will be able to help.

If you're having problems running in IIS, try copying a plain .html file to your wwwroot folder, and see if you can access it from Internet Explorer. If everything works fine, it's a problem with your mime types. If you can't access it, something is wrong with your IIS setup or you have the wrong IP address.

Accessing WAP pages using WAPJAG

WAPJAG is a web-based WAP browser that runs in your web-browser. This should run on any operating system as long as it has an up-to-date browser, so if you're not using Windows this will be a very useful tool for you.

Link: WAPJAG Virtual WAP browser

This will allow you to test your .wml files nice and easily without having to download and install any software. It also gives a reasonable amount of information if things don't work, though not as much as the Nokia Mobile Internet Toolkit.

There are a number of other PC-based WAP browsers available on the internet. The only other one I've tried is Klondike, which is rather nice but doesn't give much detail if problems occur. Search on Google for others and I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

And finally... getting the .wml file onto your Nokia 3510

If everything looks ok so far, it's time to finally try displaying the .wml file on your Nokia 3510. Cross your fingers, this is the tense/exciting bit (delete as appropriate!).

To open the .wml file, just enter it as a URL into the Nokia 3510's WAP browser just as you did in the WAP browsers above. You may want to set up a bookmark, as you'll tire of entering URLs using the keypad very quickly.

With a bit of luck the phone will connect and display your "Well done, it worked!" message. If not then I'm afraid it's time to re-read what's above and see if you can find what has gone wrong. If you draw a blank, the newsgroups mentioned above may yet come to your rescue. Good luck!

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