What is an AvantGo channel?

In its most basic form, an AvantGo channel is just another website.

There is more to it than that, of course. An AvantGo channel page does not contain all the bells and whistles you might see on, say, a web page in Internet Explorer 5.x. But if you know how to create a web page, you can make yourself an AvantGo channel.

As a simple introduction, look at what happens when you subscribe to (and subsequently download) an AvantGo channel. Some elements have been simplified for the sake of brevity, but you will get a basic understanding of the process.

The first thing you need to do is open up and configure an account on the AvantGo sync server. This account contains certain relevant information: your username and password, what channels you want to subscribe to, and so on.

After that, you install the software necessary to view AvantGo channels. This includes:

When you sync your mobile device, Mobile Link will take over and connect to the AvantGo sync server. The AvantGo sync server, after looking up what channels you are subscribed to, will download those pages from sites on the Internet. In many cases, these sites are distinct areas that contain pages optimized specifically for AvantGo channels.

The AvantGo sync server downloads all these pages and performs some pre-processing on them. This includes shrinking images too large for the mobile device's screen, discarding pieces that cannot be used by the AvantGo Client (such as Java applets) and compressing the rest of the HTML.

Once that is done, these pages are uploaded to your mobile device, and Mobile Link disconnects. All the pages from a channel are uploaded at once, so that you can view the entire channel without having to re-connect to the Internet.

At this point, you can take your mobile device with you and browse the channel at your leisure. A mini web server runs on the device and displays pages whenever you click on a link, and the AvantGo Client browser reads and formats the pages just like any other HTML browser.

Unlike most other browsers, the AvantGo Client allows you to submit forms while you are offline, and continue browsing (or submitting more forms), without having to wait for a response from a server.