We spent the morning crying into our pillows and refusing to come out of our rooms after we heard about the final version of Opera's Wii browser being delayed. Nintendo eventually called to console us though, directing our puffy eyes to an interview with the company's Internet Channel development team at its Japanese site. We had a really good talk.There are several videos and screenshots scattered around the Japanese transcript, demonstrating the changes with the Wii browser's final build. It's clear that Nintendo and Opera Software addressed a lot of common complaints users had with the trial version, making sure to implement variable zooming, improved starting times, and faster scrolling. Here's a list of all the other things we spotted on the page, mixed in with Nintendo's announced updates:
- new introduction animation
- new start page with search button
- auto-hide feature on navigation bar
- search and address buttons on nav bar
- multiple cursors (only one will be functional)
- quicker access to "favorites"
- an improved zoomed font
- buttons that will instantly type common preset letters, such as "www" or ".com"
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-22-2007 @ 7:19PM
shadow said...
One of my favorite features abou thte Wii is the use of flash games. Maybe this multiple cursors will open the door for some multiplayer flash games. You never know, Wiisave.com was able to figure out how to use all of the Wii buttons, so maybe they'll be able to do it with two controllers.
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3-22-2007 @ 7:19PM
WhatIsThatThing said...
Ooh. Neat. Maybe these features will inspire me to use the Wii browser more. Also, I just noticed the favicon. Cool.
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3-22-2007 @ 7:53PM
sphetr2 said...
Auto-hide FTW! Finally I can watch Scrubs episodes in FULL SCREEN!
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3-22-2007 @ 8:46PM
Metal_Link said...
What?! Still no tabs?! Awww...
Oh, and while I'm at it... When can we expect a Wii Fanboy version of the site made for the Wii browser? Will we see it at all?
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3-22-2007 @ 10:36PM
brian said...
I have to imagine with more and more retirement homes and older folks picking up Wii's, it would be very prudent for Nintendo to either enable USB keyboard usage, or come out with a special keyboard (I would prefer the first option ). This would really allow users without a keyboard to surf the web almost as easily and intuitively as with a computer.
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3-22-2007 @ 10:38PM
brian said...
Do'h...I meant to say without a computer.
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3-22-2007 @ 10:44PM
Algernon said...
No tabs??
btw can someone tell me what FTW means??
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3-22-2007 @ 11:42PM
hvnlysoldr said...
FTW means For The Win or sometimes on this site For The Wii.
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3-23-2007 @ 1:52AM
lynch said...
that's some sweet list of features/upgrades
___________
http://www.howtogetfreewiipoints.com
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3-23-2007 @ 5:22AM
Zan said...
I really haven't used the current one much, mostly cause it's so slow, I rather go on the computer. I hope that this will change that.
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3-23-2007 @ 2:54PM
Mohan said...
Sweet, I can watch music videos full screen and not have the tab getting in my way.
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3-24-2007 @ 2:40PM
Thomas said...
There is also an English version of the article on the US site (the videos are still in Japanese)...
http://us.wii.com/story_internet.jsp
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