- Thin Client or Wireless internet
- Smart Client or Rich Client
Thin Client typically uses a web browser on Handheld or Mobile. It directly access the server resources and renders in the browser. The pages have to be designed to support the limited layout/content in the browser. Earlier to days of mobile browser, WAP was prevalent using WML and WAP application protocol and communicating with WAP enabled Web server. The main advantage of thin client is no client side deployment required. Most of the time, browsers are available or can be installed on the handhelds. Typical examples are s60 browser on Nokia phones, openwave browser on Sony-Ericsson or Mini-Opera browser. These browsers are compliant to HTML 4.01 specification and support javascript. Another interesting proposition which makes thin client useful is using controls which are downloaded from the server such as activeX in case of windows CE/Mobile based phones or AJAX controls also known as widgets. Web2.0 specification talks about mobileAJAX which is interesting proposition to use thin clients.
The major disadvantage of thin client is that the handheld/mobile needs to be connected to internet or wireless network to access the information. This is the biggest drawback as connectivity cannot be guaranteed in the life span of the application usage.
