07-29-2006, 11:27 AM
Jeremy Parish of 1UP.com Wrote:
A Night at the Opera
We put Nintendo's DS web browser through its paces.
by Jeremy Parish, 07/27/2006
Hardcore PSP owners are quick to remind us that while the Nintendo DS may have a more impressive software library than their system of choice, it totally can't play MP3s or play movies or surf the web. Well, OK, it can play MP3s and movies if you import the Play-Yan adapter. But that web-surfing, man, that awesome tab-through-the-links-with-the-D-pad web-surfing, that amazing type-with-an-excruciating-virtual-keyboard web-surfing! Yeah, DS fanboys, that is the PSP's shining, untouchable, exclusive feature.
Well, it was, anyway -- until this week, when Nintendo released the Opera 8.0 web browser for DS and DS Lite. Of course, you have to pay for it, where the PSP's web browser is free. And like Play-Yan, it's only available in Japan for the time being.
On the plus side, though, Opera on DS lets you use the touch-screen for much more intuitive typing and link-clicking. And the system's vertical orientation seems a better fit to most website layouts. So do these little perks compensate for the shortcomings? Will DS web browsing undermine one of the PSP's key exclusive advantages?
Ever one to spend company money on things we don't really need, I imported Opera for DS and took a test drive to find out for myself.
The verdict? Surfing on DS is just as lousy as it is on PSP.
Let this be a lesson to you all: when the console wars start focusing on non-gaming pursuits, we all lose. Opera for DS is a mixed bag at best; it does some things fairly well and other things horribly. And some things it simply doesn't do, period.
Oh, right, and it's in Japanese, all the way down to the Nintendo WFC interface. That means all the help text boxes and instructions are in Japanese, too. Plus it tends to default to Japanese versions of websites. Let's get this out of the way up front: unless you're a polyglot or have a high tolerance for trial-and-error, you'll want to wait for an English-language release.
I kicked off my trial by posting a blog entry, which (between figuring out the Japanese interface and logging in to 1UP) took about half an hour for two paragraphs. Even accounting for the learning curve, this browser is not a model of efficiency. Fairly low-bandwidth pages like Wikipedia measure their loading time in minutes rather than seconds, and waiting for heavier sites (like 1UP and its competitors) to load is like sitting through an extended remix of Don McLean's "American Pie": an eternity of tedium and sorrow.
On the plus side, Nintendo has made clever use of the DS' hardware. In fact, Opera pushes the DS beyond its inherent limits -- it comes standard with a 10 MB RAM expansion cart for the GBA slot to allow for page caching. Thoughtfully, the cart that comes with the Lite edition is smaller and sits flush with the system's shell.
Naturally, Opera on DS is largely stylus-driven. Tapping on a link clicks through to that page; tapping on a text field opens a virtual keyboard which offers numerous input options, including handwriting recognition. (Not very good handwriting recognition, but it was a nice thought.) Stylus haters can also go primitive and use the D-Pad to maneuver through links, with the A button serving mouse-click duty.
Opera on DS demonstrates a remarkable ability to make everything look uniformly ugly. In the standard single-view mode (where pages are spread across both screens), layouts are flattened and stacked, as on other handheld devices like Sidekicks. Left-side sidebars tend to render above the rest of the page's content. Some simple design elements show up in this mode, but ultimately Opera makes everything look like it fell right out of 1996. Primitive rendering, it would seem, is the great equalizer.
Needless to say, sites that start ugly, like Wikipedia and Google, hold up much better in this view than our dearly beloved 1UP.
See? Above and left is what 1UP's front page looks like. The header becomes stacked, with the banner ads below it. The headlining articles section is lost due to Opera DS's inability to render Flash, so you just get the ad followed by a string of stacked-up link items.
In this view, Opera can't render embedded frames properly; instead, the full contents of the frame (even the stuff you wouldn't normally see) are displayed as part of the containing page. This turned out to be remarkably inconvenient on my My1UP page when 10 months' worth of private messages were listed out one by one.
Once you get past 1UP's main page, though, the interior sections look pretty good. Even at 50%, Crazy Buffet looks quite nice. Cowbunga, man.
As you may have noticed, Opera on DS is largely driven by a series of icons at the bottom of the screen. These are, from left to right: Back, Forward, Stop/Reload, Recent History, URL Bar, Favorites (the most sophisticated part of the entire package, with a folder-based drag-and-drop interface), Search, Options, Help, Dual/Single View, View Swap, Zoom, and Home/End.
Zoom allows you to scale the size of the screen in increments ranging from 50% up to 150%. Above left is the 100% view, in which text is so large on the 256x192 screens that the whole things is practically unusable. Fortunately, 50% view (above right) is perfectly acceptable; thanks to the brightness and clarity of the DS Lite screens and some very effective anti-aliasing, text is perfectly legible at half-size. (Click the images for a better view.) Users can scroll by using the arrow tabs on the right side of the touch screen or by simply click-dragging the page area.
There's another way to look at the web on DS as well: Dual View. In this mode, above left, one screen becomes a zoomed-in view while the other becomes an overview. The blue box on the touch screen's overview corresponds to the section that's visible above, and it can be moved about in real-time to magnify specific areas. It's also possible to swap the view, with the touch screen serving as the magnified image.
In this mode Opera does a pretty solid job of rendering the entire page as it appears in a normal browser. It's not 100% accurate, but as you can see from the My1UP page on the lower screen (left) it's pretty close.
The lack of Flash support definitely hurts, since it renders the Internet's current fad -- embedded video -- completely inoperable. YouTube is a waste of time. I mean, an even bigger waste of time than usual.
Unfortunately, so is Game Videos. Sorry, Mark, Nintendo hates you.
Really, Opera on DS is best used for simple things. My personal site, for instance, is built to load quickly with a minimum of dynamic content, and is perfectly usable on DS with very little in the way of load times. More complex sites (like, say, Nintendo's homepage) and pages heavy on interactive content, on the other hand, are a complete mess -- when they're usable at all. It's a decent enough software package, but in terms of genuine usefulness comes up severely lacking. It's not as robust as a PC or Mac browser, and it lacks the versatility of a Sidekick, since it requires an existing wi-fi access point -- and an open or WEP-protected point at that. It might come in handy in a pinch, but it's hard to imagine a circumstance under which Opera on DS would be an ideal web solution.
We put Nintendo's DS web browser through its paces.
by Jeremy Parish, 07/27/2006
Hardcore PSP owners are quick to remind us that while the Nintendo DS may have a more impressive software library than their system of choice, it totally can't play MP3s or play movies or surf the web. Well, OK, it can play MP3s and movies if you import the Play-Yan adapter. But that web-surfing, man, that awesome tab-through-the-links-with-the-D-pad web-surfing, that amazing type-with-an-excruciating-virtual-keyboard web-surfing! Yeah, DS fanboys, that is the PSP's shining, untouchable, exclusive feature.
Well, it was, anyway -- until this week, when Nintendo released the Opera 8.0 web browser for DS and DS Lite. Of course, you have to pay for it, where the PSP's web browser is free. And like Play-Yan, it's only available in Japan for the time being.
On the plus side, though, Opera on DS lets you use the touch-screen for much more intuitive typing and link-clicking. And the system's vertical orientation seems a better fit to most website layouts. So do these little perks compensate for the shortcomings? Will DS web browsing undermine one of the PSP's key exclusive advantages?
Ever one to spend company money on things we don't really need, I imported Opera for DS and took a test drive to find out for myself.
The verdict? Surfing on DS is just as lousy as it is on PSP.
Let this be a lesson to you all: when the console wars start focusing on non-gaming pursuits, we all lose. Opera for DS is a mixed bag at best; it does some things fairly well and other things horribly. And some things it simply doesn't do, period.
Oh, right, and it's in Japanese, all the way down to the Nintendo WFC interface. That means all the help text boxes and instructions are in Japanese, too. Plus it tends to default to Japanese versions of websites. Let's get this out of the way up front: unless you're a polyglot or have a high tolerance for trial-and-error, you'll want to wait for an English-language release.
I kicked off my trial by posting a blog entry, which (between figuring out the Japanese interface and logging in to 1UP) took about half an hour for two paragraphs. Even accounting for the learning curve, this browser is not a model of efficiency. Fairly low-bandwidth pages like Wikipedia measure their loading time in minutes rather than seconds, and waiting for heavier sites (like 1UP and its competitors) to load is like sitting through an extended remix of Don McLean's "American Pie": an eternity of tedium and sorrow.
On the plus side, Nintendo has made clever use of the DS' hardware. In fact, Opera pushes the DS beyond its inherent limits -- it comes standard with a 10 MB RAM expansion cart for the GBA slot to allow for page caching. Thoughtfully, the cart that comes with the Lite edition is smaller and sits flush with the system's shell.
Naturally, Opera on DS is largely stylus-driven. Tapping on a link clicks through to that page; tapping on a text field opens a virtual keyboard which offers numerous input options, including handwriting recognition. (Not very good handwriting recognition, but it was a nice thought.) Stylus haters can also go primitive and use the D-Pad to maneuver through links, with the A button serving mouse-click duty.
Opera on DS demonstrates a remarkable ability to make everything look uniformly ugly. In the standard single-view mode (where pages are spread across both screens), layouts are flattened and stacked, as on other handheld devices like Sidekicks. Left-side sidebars tend to render above the rest of the page's content. Some simple design elements show up in this mode, but ultimately Opera makes everything look like it fell right out of 1996. Primitive rendering, it would seem, is the great equalizer.
Needless to say, sites that start ugly, like Wikipedia and Google, hold up much better in this view than our dearly beloved 1UP.
See? Above and left is what 1UP's front page looks like. The header becomes stacked, with the banner ads below it. The headlining articles section is lost due to Opera DS's inability to render Flash, so you just get the ad followed by a string of stacked-up link items.
In this view, Opera can't render embedded frames properly; instead, the full contents of the frame (even the stuff you wouldn't normally see) are displayed as part of the containing page. This turned out to be remarkably inconvenient on my My1UP page when 10 months' worth of private messages were listed out one by one.
Once you get past 1UP's main page, though, the interior sections look pretty good. Even at 50%, Crazy Buffet looks quite nice. Cowbunga, man.
As you may have noticed, Opera on DS is largely driven by a series of icons at the bottom of the screen. These are, from left to right: Back, Forward, Stop/Reload, Recent History, URL Bar, Favorites (the most sophisticated part of the entire package, with a folder-based drag-and-drop interface), Search, Options, Help, Dual/Single View, View Swap, Zoom, and Home/End.
Zoom allows you to scale the size of the screen in increments ranging from 50% up to 150%. Above left is the 100% view, in which text is so large on the 256x192 screens that the whole things is practically unusable. Fortunately, 50% view (above right) is perfectly acceptable; thanks to the brightness and clarity of the DS Lite screens and some very effective anti-aliasing, text is perfectly legible at half-size. (Click the images for a better view.) Users can scroll by using the arrow tabs on the right side of the touch screen or by simply click-dragging the page area.
There's another way to look at the web on DS as well: Dual View. In this mode, above left, one screen becomes a zoomed-in view while the other becomes an overview. The blue box on the touch screen's overview corresponds to the section that's visible above, and it can be moved about in real-time to magnify specific areas. It's also possible to swap the view, with the touch screen serving as the magnified image.
In this mode Opera does a pretty solid job of rendering the entire page as it appears in a normal browser. It's not 100% accurate, but as you can see from the My1UP page on the lower screen (left) it's pretty close.
The lack of Flash support definitely hurts, since it renders the Internet's current fad -- embedded video -- completely inoperable. YouTube is a waste of time. I mean, an even bigger waste of time than usual.
Unfortunately, so is Game Videos. Sorry, Mark, Nintendo hates you.
Really, Opera on DS is best used for simple things. My personal site, for instance, is built to load quickly with a minimum of dynamic content, and is perfectly usable on DS with very little in the way of load times. More complex sites (like, say, Nintendo's homepage) and pages heavy on interactive content, on the other hand, are a complete mess -- when they're usable at all. It's a decent enough software package, but in terms of genuine usefulness comes up severely lacking. It's not as robust as a PC or Mac browser, and it lacks the versatility of a Sidekick, since it requires an existing wi-fi access point -- and an open or WEP-protected point at that. It might come in handy in a pinch, but it's hard to imagine a circumstance under which Opera on DS would be an ideal web solution.
Source
I thought the "Post-script" was rather... inappropriate, so I didn't post it. However, you can go to the source and see for yourself.
of Posting news storys if I see the source interesting then I will post it If I dont remember to and dont remember the Source I wont post it If i just dont want to I wont.