It is a feature on cellular phones – feature which enables you to surf on web with your cellphone. Maybe it’s bit 2001 but read what was it like…

I’ve been surfing and exploring using wireless application protocol aka WAP for last couple of weeks now on many Simpsons sites and results are quite good. Simpsons sites like Evergreen Terrace, The Simpsons Channel, The Simpsons Top 100 gives a pretty nasty ride before i go to sleep at nights! It clearly opened my eyes more because now I can access sites I like with my cellphone. Still, it’s kind of wierd that you can’t see none single image on it (unless site is made for supporting WAP) – those images you have seen thousands and thousands of time on your favorite sites when using regular browser on your PC. However, even without images i have been visiting on these Simpsons sites so many times and years that I can easily imagine everything.

Small text-based surfing is pretty fast (unless site is filled with unnecessary words – explanation comes later) and you get the information you looking for – like in Evergreen Terrace’s case you get latest headlines and stories by couple of clicks. You have to wait pages loading but that’s the feature we have in real web too. My cellular phone also supports bookmarks so I have every page i like only one click away from me.

Now for the actual results.

First of all I went to my own site, The Simpsons Folder. Mainpage loads fine but javascripts I have on my about feature makes script readable on WAP so it’s kind of messy start but needs scrolling down. It amazed me to see my stuff on my phone screen! Navigation is easy and you have actually click to see it – works great and saves the space a lot. Next I go for my newspage. Everything is there. It starts with the stuff I have put there but it is cut in 25 pages! This clearly is a problem on WAP. Long pages are cut and you have to click and click to see more. Pretty boring and time consuming.

Back to The Simpsons Folder’s mainpage. I remembered that I had excellent supporters – “buddies” at bottom and there they are: Evergreen Terrace, Last Exit to Springfield, The Simpsons Archive, The Simpsons Top 100, The Simpsons Tree and Little Miss Springfield are all there. I check all of these out and results are quite different.

First of there is Little Miss Springfield which uses Flash. You get blank page.

The Simpsons Archive was also bit a disappoinment. It has so much words on their mainpage that it needs a lot of scrolling to get their news section for example. Stuff is definitively there and works great but scrolling is pain. Definitively works better on it’s real form – on the web with ie or netscape.

The Simpsons Tree was success! I got it’s update on a first screen which was really a nice thing.

Last Exit to Springfield also was huge success! Updates starts right away and Adam’s ‘CUP UPD’ -update was very easy to read. I recommend this link to check out with your WAP phone.

The Simpsons Top 100 is also pretty fine target. Although Bryan’s update with long Simpsons character quote makes it bit hard but you still get your latest Simpsons webnews. I visited also on Maggied and this was killing time – scroll, scroll, scroll and scroll and after you have scroll 5 pages of registering information, my profiles and stuff what’s on top you get forums you need to scroll more. This was also a site where I got lots of ‘page cannot be found’ messages or my phone just freezed and had to re-open everything.

Lastly, there is Evergeen Terrace which worked pretty okay too. For somehow it wanted to show on first Nohomer’s register links, poll and some other questions done by Eric Wirtanen before it hooked me on actual content i was looking for – mainpage updates. This site uses ‘click here to read more’ feature which is highly critisized by many but believe me when I say… with your WAP phone connected to Evergreen Terrace’s mainpage it works great! It gives just a right size of words of each update and if i want to read more i click to see more of it. Just great and definitively keeper on my bookmarks.

I also tested some other sites and for example Nate Gilmore’s personal site. This is most easiest site for WAP use. I spent about 30 minutes here just reading what’s surfing on Nate’s head. Surfed on old archives, scrolled and read what he has wrote there. Nice experience – although im not sure why Nate has only 14 dollarinos in his bank and why he always crawls back to his burger world… text is easy to read and interesting for if you’re into blogs.

The Simpsons sites are normally filled with good content. With your WAP phone it’s painfull operation to read long pages and I have to say that I clearly started to knew what to avoid and not to click in the end. Of course it is possible to read The Simpsons Folder’s DYK’s but i don’t recommend it to anyone using only Wireless Application Protocol. Pages are so long and cut that it makes it very hard trip but if you need to do it no matter what – it is possible to do it. Maybe when you’re alone in forrest, reindeers come to say hello for you and there’s nothing else but you and your cellphone…

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