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"
As we
regretfully announced earlier, the release date for the final version of Opera's Wii browser has been pushed back to April. The
Internet Channel will be available to download for free until the end of June. After that, users will be able to download it from the
Wii Shop Channel for 500
Wii Points.
