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Wii's Opera Browser Now Downloadable
As we discussed earlier this week, the Opera browser for the Wii is available in a sort of trial form today. Game|Life has apparently been so taken with this offering, that they've redesigned their site so that it can be easily viewable via the Wii browser. They also have the official details on the download. From that article: "Nintendo is currently offering a free trial of Opera for Wii which is now available for download. The release of the final version of the Opera browser for Wii is currently scheduled for late March 2007. Opera for Wii will remain a free download until June 30, 2007. After June 30, Opera will be available for download from the Wii Shop Channel for 500 Wii points. Users who download Opera before June 30, 2007, can continue to use the browser at no cost for the lifetime of the Wii system." The release goes on to mention how you can develop for the browser, with helpful website links and references.
And this story is the first thing Isee. (typing is a bitch)
I saw the notice this morning (the blue light flashing) but I won't get a chance to try it until after work. Has anyone here tried it? How does the text look on an HDTV (I know it's only 480p)? How easy/hard is it to navigate with the Wiimote? Does it feel fast or slow?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Dude... seriously time to get a life.
You are all a bunch of idots.
Low rez mixed with being forced to use the Wiimote is just a useless mess. I don't know why Nintendo is bothering to include this junk after all the talk about how their system was a true gamer's machine that didn't waste time on non-game related functionality.
A friend has it and says he really likes it, but noticed one thing. Fark apparently requires the user to scroll horizontally to see all of the content. A feature I'd like to see in modern browsers is an option to override absolute size specifications on websites to keep things scrolling in one dimension. On an embedded devices like a cell phone or game console (and maybe even a desktop browser, why not) I'd be willing to trade a slight departure from the 'artistic vision' of a web designer for enhanced usability.
Along with a video and screenshots, Game|Life links to a comic by Opera explaining how to get it working:i /comic/
...yeah
http://www.opera.com/products/devices/nintendo/wi
Video: http://www.opera.com/nintendo/wii/video
Pictures: http://www.opera.com/nintendo/wii/screenshots
Anyone else think the comments just weren't rendering right before they turned off ABP and saw ads?
Let me guess...there are "particular" Wiimote gestures that will bring up porn, right?
>> "What would the robut do? Frame someone!"
Typing is kinda tough but it suggests words, like a cell phone.
Pointing the wiimote at the tv to click on something feels right. Overall I'm pretty happy with it except for one thing.
The zoom feature is not quite right yet. You don't have finegrained enough control. Your either all the way in or all the way out.
I was really looking forward to some homestarrunner.com full tv screen action.
I'm impressed at the level of things that work in the "trial" browser, e.g. I just logged in to my Slashdot account, watched a Google video, and almost everything I have implemented on my own websites - which use some admittedly sketchy scripting - doesn't just work, but works awesomely. (an image with an onClick attribute and an abbr tag around it not only does the proper clicking reaction, but will make the wiimote rumble on mouseover!)
At the same time, I'm frustrated with the unnavigability of the thing. Unless I'm missing something big, you have to go back to the "Home Page" (essentially, your user agreement) to enter a new web address, and cannot do this from any other page. Also, the address entry field lacks an autocomplete feature, forcing you to type out full and potentially onerous URLs (oddly, web form fields do have autocomplete). And there are Favorites, but you have to actually be at a page to Favorite it.
Shows promise, but I don't think it will be anything really usable at least until the final version, unless they plan on releasing updated trials.
Glog!
It makes me wonder if we're going to start to see pages formatted just for television readability, specifically for console browsers. If anything it enforces standards a little more - you NEED to be able to adjust the text size, some sites won't allow for that. And widescreen displays are a bit different of course for layout due to the aspect ratio. I noticed that the PS3 browser homepage asks right off the bat if you are browsing in HD or SD.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
It's great! Now I can watch google video on my tv. Youtube doesn't seem to work though, something about the version of flashplayer or javascript.
This is awesome! Takes forever to type but still cool. Biggest problem I see is that when I logged in to /. it showed the password in plain text. This is the first site I went to :)
Normal view - http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=330182196& size=o
& size=o
Zoomed in - http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=330182199
I did quite like using it but after an hour I had a headache.
Jonathan
With the exception of keyboard support (if there is any, let me know :-) ), the Wii's Opera browser is perfect for "web 2.0" sites like Meebo.
Go check it out. http://meebo.com. You can sign in immediately from the page to AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Gtalk, ICQ, and Jabber, or you can sign up, create a profile, and all of your IM identities will get stored in the site for single sign-on.
The only bad part is trying to type using an on-screen keyboard.
What other nifty sites lend themselves to the Wii?
Michael C. Hollinger
When the browser went live I was able to use YouTube without a problem. This morning they put up some bullshit about not having the newest flash and Java plugins.
However, the shitty Rocky Balboa trailer embedded on their homepage works just fine.
They are fucking with us.
I didn't already have a top of the line desktop sitting right next to my TV. If I didn't have a computer it would be friggin' amazing but having to zoom in and out constantly to navigate a page is annoying. I do have to give some props to nintendo's download server. I have the whole thing downloaded in about 2 minutes time. I was expecting it to be flooded and take forever. When the final version is released it will definitely be something to grab, if only to avoid paying $5 for it once June hits. But seriously, if you have a decent computer I see no real point to it!
This is very impressive for a beta. Props to Opera and Nintendo for this. Just need a better way to type.
Wiicade is well worth the price of admission. They have a collection of Wii-oriented Flash games you can play using the Wiimote. Tactical Assassin is the best.
When I moderate, I only use "-1, Overrated". That way, I never get meta-moderated!
Well crud. Meebo's basically broken on the Wii. So much for that...
On my system at least, the page is corrupted, with all sorts of layout issues.
Michael C. Hollinger
Related to this, how's regular navigation? One thing I've noticed whenever I put a DVD in my computer is that it's easier to navigate the menus with a mouse than with the arrows on my remote. And those are usually designed with arrow-navigation in mind.
The web is mostly designed by people who expect a free-form pointer-type device. Does the Opera browser make use of the Wiimote as a pointer, or does it rely on the arrows?
- Wand
- Cookies
- Preferences
- some type of keyboard accessory for the Wii (I know this was mentioned already
With these four things, I truly believe the Opera browser on Wii will be a near-desktop quality Internet experience. While triyng to post comments on Slashdot using Wii, I noticed that every time a new page loaded I would have to log back in. This told me that either there is no Cookie support whatsoever, or that perhaps there was just a bug with them. Another thing that would be nice is for Opera to remember recently typed in words, so in fields such as "username" or "password" it would have remembered to offer my username "despero" instead of continuing to suggest "desperate," etc. Basically, everything I listed above comes down to the pain of having to type using an on-screen keyboard. Wand, Cookies, and a keyboard accessory all simply help to make typing less of a chore. Preferences would be implemented only to configure these things. Web page compatibility and standards support are already very impressive and need only a few tweaks.Just don't try to visit the Boston Globe site.
So this would be rad, perhaps it already exists. The browser is known to play flash videos (ie youtube)...what would be hot is if you could install a application that would index and share videos out of a (or a bunch of) directories on a local machine in which you could browse to via the Wii webbrowser and playback xvid/divx files full screen in a flash player. Something like gnump3d for video playback in a flash player. Get on it, smart people.
adventure-today.com
I haven't seen a negative point of view yet, so I figured I'd throw in my two cents.
I was midly disappointed with the browser.
It feels natural to use the d-pad for scrolling, but that doesn't work. Instead it's a combination of using the pointer and holding B. This means that to read a web page you have to keep your wiimote pointed at the screen the whole time. (vs just holding it in your lap and scrolling with the d-pad).
There are no options. At all (unless I'm missing something). The first thing I wanted to do was increase the minimum font size but there's no way to do it. On my screen you can't read anything but headings without zooming in (which brings up the scroll issue above). The columnar view is nice, but it's so close to readable without it that a small bump in minimum font size would mean I could probably see a whole page and read it in the normal layout.
On my screen (16:9) it doesn't fill the whole screen. There's a black bar on the top and right of the browser window that the cursor can go into, but pages aren't rendered there. No clue why that is.
The huge navigation bar at the bottom of the screen needs to auto hide or at least not take up 1/4 of the screen. There's precious little real estate as it is.
The favorites screen has a lot of lag. It seems that it's trying to download every favorite so it can render thems as icons every time you view your favorites.
It does handle flash video, though people have reported problems after some use (with it not rendering further videos). I haven't experienced this, you tube worked great for me.
As a renderer it's fine, as one would expect being based on Opera. This is about all that I like about it. I'd like the ease of selecting a favorite if they were snappier. I think on the whole it's got a lot of promise, but each piece needs work to get it where it needs to be. It's definitely simple, but simple to the point that it's almost not usable.
Also, it would be great to get quicktime support (trailers), but I imagine that's probably not on the todo list.
while some people seem to dislike the idea of browsing on their tv i've always wanted to read the news, lying on my couch. reading news and other things work just fine but there are some improvements i'd like to see in the final version. here some thoughts: - flash seems to be version 7. youtube works sometimes, sometimes not . - pointing the wiimote constantly at the screen is tiresome. there should be some alternative tilt-functionality for scrolling/moving the cursor. i'd even use the nunchuck. - one should be able to hide the browser bar, so fullscreen youtube-videos becomes more "fullscreen" - widgets don't work yet - managing the favourites should be easier. the browser displays thumbnails of all favourites together - who take forever to load (although the images are not being refreshed). it's impossible to chose a favourite until all thumbnails are loaded. maybe this should look more like the photo channel. - youtube- or google-videos are just a little to slow - maybe thats because of the wii hardware. - the onscreen keybourd should have a 'www.'-button, the dictionary should 'learn' (maybe it does. and i haven't realized yet) - i need a keyboard! - the wii crashed after i tried to add digg to the favourites. after i turned it off, i had to remove the browser data or it would crash every time i'd start the internet-channel. to erase the browser data an the wii - it could use 'gestures' (for functions like 'back'). - some 'copy & paste' function would be great - some 'flash only' sites look really good (try j.k.rowling.com or gorillaz.com - flash games (wiicade, etc.)! - media plugins for playing quicktime-, mp-, real-, mp3-files, etc. would be nice. (at least in my dreams) - some form of tabbed browsing/multitasking would be nice (again, dreaming. and while i'm at it: what about a microphone to plug into the wiimote and using it as an ip-phone?).
its kinda hit and miss, most normal sites work right, but it doesn't play youtube out-of-box (errr download). you'd think with it being a later build of Opera and supposedly including javascript and flash support it would work with almost any site but there are a few bugs. there were several sites that had login boxes that would pull up the keyboard then "crash" and reload the "home" site or reload the page after entering the username but not the password resulting in a error. however, we should expect some hiccups while they work on the "full" version using our feedback from the "trial". Viva la Wii!
P.S. When are we going to see WiiFox? and will it have to be on WiiLi?
Did you know that you can be apathetic to apathy? Not that I give a shit...
I don't know if maybe things are slow due to traffic, but I can't seem to get on the shop channel, at all. Then again, I've been leaching wireless off my neighbors ever since my router broke last week, so things have been a bit in & out.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
I just want everybody to know when you download the browser it states this is a trial and features were removed and they will be in the final version.
Has the first image/movie of a female using the smooth rodlike rumble function equipped Wiimote in a way not sanctioned by Nintendo (american branche anyway) already surfaced?