Nintendo is on a roll with these Wii updates. Hot on the heels of the Weather Channel release, the Big N has seen it fit to give their fans another reason to patiently wait while Mario collects coins on the bottom of the screen. Yes, that means the Internet Channel has been set free.
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Although it’s only a trial version, it gets the job done in an admirable fashion. You’ll be surfing the net in no time, all in the confines of your dark, dank dungeon of sinful pleasure. But (there’s always a “but” with Nintendo nowadays) it’s definitely far from perfect.
First, there’s no javascript or quicktime, so forget about watching movie trailers on Apple’s site. We do get Flash, though, which means Youtube is a go, but there are reports that EU users are having problems with the site. You Old Worlders, drop us a line in the comments and prove us right/wrong.
Also, viewing pages on a screen not formatted for small text is a pain. When you first arrive at a page, the text is very blurry. Thankfully, Opera gives us the option to zoom in on specific parts of the page to get a better view. It zooms in a little too much for my liking, but it still helps. Hopefully component cables can clear up some of the blurriness, otherwise people may think twice about the Wii Browser in the future.
Text input is streamlined somewhat with a predictive text function, which definitely helps when commenting on gaming sites. So all you trolls out there that ruin the fun for everyone else, the Wii can be your new home.
Of course, this is just a trial version. We should be thankful for getting it at all, but what happens when Old Man Jenkins can’t visit his porn sites because of a lack of quicktime compatibility? I don’t want to be there when he busts a totally different nut.
Update 1: Based on a few reports, Javascript is enabled on the Opera-based browser. Flash support is for version 7 only. This means any functionality that is coded with versions 8 or 9 in mind will not work on the Wii Browser. Also, here’s a list of standard media formats not supported: MPEG, WMV, QUICKTIME, AVI, PDF, MP3. For more information, hit up Opera’s forums to see or report any other problems with the browser. Thanks to user Raccooon for the info.
I…couldn’t get flash working. Have to try that one again.Also, viewing the web from the TV has never been a good idea, so I really hope there’s no one out there that expects to get the full fledged experience on the wii (I’m looking at you porn guy).
Yeah, I’m hearing now that Adobe may have updated the Flash player over the weekend, and some get a warning that you need to update the browser plug-in. Perfect timing, I guess.
“First, there’s no javascript or quicktime”
Um, JavaScript is DEFINITELY supported. It’s built into Opera.
“Yeah, I’m hearing now that Adobe may have updated the Flash player over the weekend”
Nope. According to the Opera forums, the latest version is still Flash 7 for anyone not using Windows.
Ok, so I’m assuming any video/apps that are coded with Flash 8 or higher specific-features are not going to work. That’s where some of the problem may be coming from. And I’ve tried some sites that use javascript and they’ve been giving me problems. It may be a little buggy or something. It appears the browser may be a bit spotty in some features. But thanks for the heads up Raccoooon. Much appreciated.
Article now updated with the most freshest of info. Hot off the the presses.
Lates from the Opera forums is this:
You can’t license anything from Adobe that’s newer than Flash 7, so they couldn’t license anything higher if they wanted to. Basically Adobe seems to not want to support anything that is not a PC :)