The foundation of Mobile Channels rests on two key technologies: CDF and a subset of HTML.
A CDF file provides an inventory of items for Internet Explorer 4.0 to synchronize with a Windows CE-based device. Using a CDF file, you can select items to be synchronized for offline browsing. While the Web site itself may have links to other content, the CDF file specifies only the pages and images available on the device. This specification reduces the time and resources necessary for a computer to synchronize content.
The subset of HTML implemented for Mobile Channels provides tools for formatting and displaying quality Web content on Windows CE-based mobile devices. The subset includes support for tables, images, and various font styles. The Channel Browser automatically resizes images for display on smaller screens. However, Mobile Channels provides a special META tag to override this automatic resizing. For more information about the Mobile Channels HTML subset, see Mobile Channels HTML Reference.
In addition, Mobile Channels provides the pocket Active Server Pages (pASP) scripting language. This simple, client-size language provides capabilities similar to server-side scripting. You can use pASP to generate HTML pages from data templates.
This section covers the following topics: