Wii Browser Diagnostic
When I woke up this morning my Wii was throbbing a neon blue. The Opera Browser beta had arrived! I set it to download during my morning routine and returned during lunch to do some prodding. Here’s what I found:
- Window size: 800×500
- User Agent:
Opera/9.00 (Nintendo Wii; U; ; 1309-9; en) - JavaScript works (including
alert()andXMLHttpRequest()) - Cookies work
- Flash version:
7.0 r68if you believe in JavaScript (Wii 7,0,70,0if you believe Adobe)
The buttons on the wii-mote result in the following JavaScript keyCodes:
170 -
171 B
173 2
174 +
175 up directional
176 down directional
177 right directional
178 left directional
The browser doesn’t recognize the nunchuk.
I found these links in a referrer to this post from what I think is a Swedish forum: Flash Keys (doesn’t appear to work on my Wii) and Frames Per Second (drops to 8-10 fps).
See also: Making Wii-friendly Pages A reasonably thorough review of the Wii Browser’s capabilities over at Dev.Opera.
019 Comments
Thank God alert() works! I’ve been wanting to use that!
Hehe. :)
So much for designing sites larger than 800x600.
You never know, they could have crippled it. From what I can tell it’s a fully qualified Opera 9. Finally I can check Mint on the tv! ;)
Thankfully, the wii navigation with the B button to scroll around a larger webpage is really painless.
The thing that bothers me is the always-present space-eating “breathing” scroll arrows. Its hard to read text with those.
If you point the wii-mote away from the screen while you’re reading the arrows disappear.
Thanks a lot for helping me to spend another 250 dollars this christmas.
Maybe I can play it off like it’s a present for the wife!
I’m kind of bummed that it uses back and forward buttons, instead of gestures. Opera on the PC is famous for its mouse gestures — it’s only a small stretch of the imagination to see them replaced with Wii-mote gestures!
I want one now. :( Damn the UK for being last to get them, and out of stock!
Any chance I can watch ‘the show’ on this?
I can see people developing some Javascript games for the Wii now ;)
Dan, unfortunately no. The Flash version of The Show uses Revver which requires Flash 8.
David, or Flash 7 games (that’s actually why I went digging for keyCodes).
I know what I’ll be doing to escape the family’s insanity over the next few days… I’ve got sites to check - and layout to edit.
…Gonna have to get the husband to stop playing Zelda first…
it plays the videos on wii.com perfectly, of course, and video.google.com likewise — but unfortunately youtube doesn’t work. Hopefully YT will add some backwards-compatibility for wii users — it’s a killer platform for that site IMO!
Has anyone noticed if cookies work?
Yup, I checked. The “Remember Me” checkbox on my comment form (which uses JavaScript and cookies) works fine. I’ve added that to the list in the main article too.
Youtube works for me now. (i just watched “Dick in a Box”. On my TV! It’s the future, I tells ya!)
How did they get the resolution to be 800x600 if 480p is 640x480? Are they shrinking the image somehow?
They should give the Wii a special media type. It would be cool to design for the Wii seperatly. I think, if someone would implent this, it should be Opera.