On Saturday I wrote about my first experiences with the Wii Browser and since I’ve tested a few pages to fix my css problem.
I found the quirk straight away which was down to positioning. I’d set the css properties of the logo in the banner to position: relative and left: 0 but Opera for the Wii ignored this but rendered it correctly when I used absolute positioning.
I’ve since done more surfing and found a couple of useful resources worth sharing.
One thing that struck me while playing about with css is what screen resolution should a Wii friendly site be?
On one of my test pages I put in a div which I set to about 775px before it wanted to wrap (or zoom out). This then got me wondering do all webpages on the Wii render at the same screen res? I’m using a 4:3 20 inch tv, what about a 42 inch plasma? Do pages look the same? Interestingly wiinintendo says the viewable area is 608×456 but is this still the case? The article promised for “part 2 tomorrow” but I checked their December and January 2007 archives and couldn’t find a part 2.
Opera mention that if you define a handheld stylesheet, the automatic reformatting will be overridden with the styles you define in the stylesheet, presenting the user with a single column (or zoom) layout. It’s a compromise worth considering but I would rather put more effort into making a comparable version for the Wii rather than a dumbed down version.
Clearly there are a lot of questions to be asked and of course users can have their own settings which may mess things up even more. I will be watching the growth of the Wii for browsing, in the meantime us developers can only follow Opera’s advice and test in the lateset version of Opera for Windows in the hope that our sites will be at least 95% Wii compatible.
Recently I’ve been investigating Google Analytics which is an excellent free tool for website stats reporting.
I added the script to a main Departmental site which I’ve done all of the development work for and know intimately. It’s been interesting to see the effect of their recent campaigns and how successful visitors have been in finding the right content.
One stat which really interested me was that people on the Wii are hitting the site. Albeit a very small number but it prompted me to download the Internet Channel for my own Wii and see how the site rendered. I was pleased that it rendered fairly well but a bit stumped that the Departmental logo overlapped the site banner.
Next day in work I made a tweak, came home and checked it that night and still the same. That then lead me to go surfing for some Wii Opera Browser tips and what did I find? Absolutely nothing. There’s a complete lack of resources for web developers, no such thing as an emulator, no comparable version of Opera (the browser which the Wii uses) and unfortunately no Wii Browser Mode available on the current version of Opera.
So time permitting, I’m going to start building some dummy pages, host on my own server and start playing about with css as obviously Opera for the Wii has a few quirks. If anyone else has been down this road I’d really love to hear about their experiences. Also the PS3, which I don’t own and have never played with, has it’s own completely new browser, again how does it handle css?
The Wii Zapper was released in early December and I, probably like many others, thought I’d buy myself one in my local Tescos or Asda. However, as it turns out the Zapper has been one of the most sought after Wii accessories, fetching silly prices on Ebay. Not willing to pay £40 for something which retails at £19.99 I’ve been surfing sites such as Game, Argos, Toys R Us etc for weeks – but they’re all out of stock!
A couple of weeks ago I seen a post on my current favourite site www.hotdealsuk.co.uk which stated that Amazon France had the Wii Zapper in stock. Despite taking annual holidays in France I’m still somewhat rusty with the lingo but I proceeded and successfully ordered a Zapper. However, it’s still not arrived, 5 days after the estimated arrival date so I sent an email through the site to check if it definitely had been dispatched. At the time I thought it’ll take a few days to get a reply, it’ll probably be in French and I’ll have to use Babelfish BUT… much to my surprise 5mins later, yes 5mins later I get a reply, in English, saying it had been dispatched and to wait 2 more days before coming back to them. Now that’s what I call excellent customer service, Vive La France!
