Wii! Another browser to optimize for?
Friday January 5, 2007
There are a lot of Web browsers out there, and just when you think you've got it all figured out Opera and Nintendo have to come out with a new one.
Image courtesy J Kyrnin
Now, before you go and tell me "but it's Opera, how different can it be?" Let me tell you that it is actually somewhat different. No, we weren't in line on the day that the Wii was released, but we did get one right before Christmas, and while I still can't box to save my life, Zelda might get saved from the Twilight soon.
Image courtesy J Kyrnin
The main issue with browsing on a Wii is that the default zoom is difficult to view. It's reminiscent of designing for pages at 640x480 resolution - not a lot of the page shows up. And scrolling to the side is not much easier even with a Wiimote.
Luckily there are some resources to help you optimize your pages for Wii browsers:
- Wordpress Wii plugin - if you run a blog on Wordpress, this plugin will automatically detect the Wii and display your pages more favorably for them. I wonder if I could get the About developers to use it...
- Web Design Guide for Opera on Wii - this site includes some of the graphics that are used on the shopping site as well as the exact screen dimensions (608×456 pixels).
- And if you don't like your site design or your Wii, this person will do a site design for a Wii (or a PS3 or XBox).
I feel that with technology as it is that we should not be the ones formating to the Wii, it’s bad enough we have to make flash workable for text phones, but the Wii is going to be put up on a television screen and for the 500 bucks they are paying for it they should have some form of profesional browser on their platform.
Currently I set my min-resolution to 800*600 which I feel is almost too small, but I know that there are still people with those browser proportions. Bringing that down to 640*480 would be rediculous. In fact, I am going to write a letter to Nintendo right now about this matter. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.
actually, the Wii is only (only?) $250.
And Opera is a professional browser.
The problem with the Wii is not the browser or the resolution but the fact that you’re viewing it on a TV. For example, when you sit down to your computer or laptop, your monitor is only about 1-2 feet from your eyes. So you can handle a smaller font size without a problem. When you sit down at your TV you’re probably more like 6-8 feet away from it. Even if you’re only 4 feet from it, that’s still twice the distance you sit from a computer monitor.
So the fonts need to be larger so that people can see them from across the room. I actually think that the Wii does a pretty good job of making the fonts legible (my lousy photo notwithstanding). And the zoom feature is really nice. You can zoom in on sections of the screen just by clicking the Wiimote.
And most TVs don’t have really high resolution to begin with. Granted with HDTV that will change, but most people won’t be upgrading to that for a long time.
sigh…not again
I have similar feelings to Daniel’s. I have spent the past month in front of my computer trying to learn CSS to update my site from being HTML 4.01 compatible.
I have looked over Jennifer’s material, 2 books and numerous web sites and have given up for now.
I have checked my XHTML/CSS test pages at http://browsershots.org/ which seemed to illustrate that styling a web page using CSS is an extremely poor choice. If you add a small section of style it may look great on a few browsers but completely pull the page apart on others… unless you put in a HACK to make the other browsers interpret your intentions correctly. Sometimes you have to put in other HACKS to counter the HACK you just put in.
My existing site shows up on the various browsers very much as intended which I have verified through the link mentioned above. I’ll stick with HTML 4.01 until a STANDARD is set and functional.
Maybe this finally show “designers” how different the web really is. There is no exact presentation on the web, and this is good! Design with flexibility. A site should be usable, from 640×480, to 1920×1080. Forget specific pixel counts, they are just a means to an end (for the computer do compute to accommodate a user’s environment).
the pages themselves are just code. It’s the browser that renders them. It should be up to the programmers of those browsers to make everything display properly. Designers shouldn’t have to write 4+ different versions of a site to accomodate different OSes/Browsers/Resolutions, etc..
BP: while you’re right, we shouldn’t have to do that, the reality is that we do have to if we want our pages to be visible to the widest possible audience. If you don’t care, then you don’t have to – and it would be nice if browsers were more compatible, but the fact of the job is that right now they aren’t and the ones left holding the bag are us – the Web designers.