Developing Web Clipping Applications

Introduction
Concepts: Web Clipping and PQA
Design, HTML coding, Compilation of PQA, installation and testing
Conclusion

Concepts: Web Clipping and PQA

A Palm Query Application (PQA) is an application that can be installed on a Palm in the same way as any other application. It is like a special mini-Web application:

• It is made up of a set of pages and images stored locally on the client side.
• It can send a query to a Web server that will send back a page in the form of a Web Clipping.

For the definition of a Web Clipping, just reverse the order of the above sentence: a Web Clipping is a page sent by a Web server in response to a query from a PQA.

Web Clipping pages and PQA pages are HTML pages; more precisely, they use a subset of HTML 3.2. To be read by the Palm, the HTML pages are compiled.

• The local PQA pages are compiled by the Query Application Builder (QAB) tool before the application is installed on the device.
• The Web Clipping pages are compiled on the fly by a Palm.net proxy.

Physical Architecture

1: The PQA requires a page that is not stored locally, and sends a query via the Wireless network (BellSouth for the USA, for example). The packet containing the query is compressed.

2: The query passes via a Palm.net Web Clipping proxy, which translates the compressed packet into an HTTP query to the Web server.

3: The Web server sends back a Web Clipping. This page may be either static or dynamic.

4: The proxy compresses the HTTP response and sends it to the Palm client.

Implementing a Web Clipping application

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