Well it's finally available. The trial version of Opera 9 for the Wii was released early in the morning of December 22, and gives gamers a taste of what's to come in the full version that'll be released in a few months' time. Although Opera has never been the "mainstream" choice of Internet browser in the past, and most people who go out of their way to get a decent one generally head over and get Mozilla Firefox, it's still one of the best browsers available. It just lacks the marketing or hype that Firefox has gained over the past couple of years. A lot like Nintendo BW (Before Wii).Did I mention that it's free?
Now many of you may be skeptical at the idea of browsing the internet on a limited resolution screen and no keyboard input. In truth it does take a little getting used to. Having to click text fields with the cursor and then manually entering each character using the on-screen keyboard as seen in the Wii Message Board system is hardly ideal for quick messaging. URL's are also entered in this way, although a favorites list is available for sites that you visit often. We can only hope Nintendo will make use of the Wii's rear USB ports and provide proper keyboard functionality before the full version of Opera is released.
Upon loading up the browser you're presented with a screen displaying three options. Saved favorites, manual URL input, and Help. The help screen is just a rundown of how to control the browser using the Wii controller. The cursor is controlled using the pointer functionality of the remote, A is essentially "left-click", B is used to scroll both vertically and horizontally around the viewing area, plus (+) and minus (-) are used to zoom in and out for a better view of the page, 1 brings up your favorites list and 2 zaps the page's layout and attempts to format it into a more readable and accessible page. Useful for longer strings of content, as the default text size on some sites can be a little on the small side, even when zoomed in.
The pages themselves all render as Opera would render them. It's standards compliant browser, so it might not display everything exactly as it's seen in Internet Explorer or FireFox, but odds are, if that's the case, it's doing it correctly. The screen resolution seems to be at around 800x600, or perhaps whatever my TV is. I'm not entirely sure. What that does mean is that the default viewing area of most sites requires horizontally scrolling a little to see the full page. Not a huge issue, as scrolling's as simple as holding B and moving your hand right, but it's not ideal. The interface is as basic as it needs to be. Most of the screen is used to display the page, and a small bar along the bottom provides buttons for "Back", "Forward", "Refresh", "Favorites" and "Home", which takes you to the previously mentioned page with the three options. The buttons are large and easy to click with the Wii controller. No complaints.
Owners of the DS version will be pleased to note that the Wii rendition of the browser does fully support Adobe Flash, and viewing videos on YouTube works flawlessly. No load times or slow downloads, they stream and play just as they would to your PC. It really is pretty damn cool to see online videos playing straight from your TV (and I probably sound so 1999 saying that). JavaScript functionality is also present, but support for actual Java applets seems to have been omitted. Sorry guys. You can't join #n-philes chat from the Wii, but you can play with our nifty D-Pad on the controller on the front page!
Unfortunately trying to play non-Flash video files didn't seem to work out too well. Not a huge surprise, as they'd require additional codecs and licensing royalties to be paid and a whole ton of other badness. Looks like we're stuck with FLV videos for the time being. Luckily just about every video on the planet has made it into FLV by now.
Featurewise, it's pretty slim. There's no tabbed browsing or settings to play around with. You pretty much have the page you're looking at, and the options to change that page. That's it. Perhaps we'll see some additional functionality in the full version, but as it stands the Wii Browser isn't bad. With keyboard functionality, tabbed browsing and perhaps a few more options concerning text size, screen resolution and media support, it could perhaps give the PC browsers a run for their money.
So if I haven't convinced you to spend the hefty price of ZERO Wii Points yet, uh, I'm not sure how to end this sentence. Just check it out!
