Opera Browser for DS Confirmed - First Screens
Like sex in public, without the rap sheet
Nintendo has announced that Opera will be the browser of choice for Nintendo's DS, confirming speculation dating back to the machine's announcement that full Internet capabilities would eventually comprise a major aspect of the portable's mainstream allure.
SPOnG believes that Nintendo has been in talks with every major browser player, though the popularity of Opera in Japan amongst the Macintosh community there has sealed the deal with the independent Java-based softie.
The announcement, made just minutes ago at a press conference in Tokyo, confirmed Internet capabilities for the Japanese market only, though a full global roll-out is expected to be unveiled in the coming weeks.
Opera online functionality will require adopters to purchase a standard DS cartridge, expected to be budget-priced and will make use of Nintendo's market-leading Wi-Fi service.
“Within just five seconds of turning on the system, the Nintendo DS is already fully operational. This makes it the ideal device to enable people to swiftly obtain the latest information from the Internet, wherever they are,” says Masaru Shimomura, Deputy General Manager of Nintendo’s R & D Department in a press release issued this morning. "Opera exceeded our expectations with its user friendly interface, quick access to all your favourite sites, ease of use and, most importantly, in making the best use of the Nintendo DS system’s unique double screens and touch screen features. Opera is an important partner for Nintendo in our efforts to further expand the users of the Nintendo DS."
Nintendo showed a demonstration of the Opera browser highlighting what users can expect. Overcoming the DS' diminutive screen size, the lower screen will represent the whole page with a touchscreen interface controlling a zoomed-in upper screen close up. Handwriting recognition has been confirmed, though expected announcements regarding VoIP were not forthcoming. SPOnG expects free voice calls to form a major part of Nintendo's E3 DS presentation.
No specific launch date was confirmed by NCL, though SPOnG expects the browser will release alongside the DS Lite and will almost certainly be bundled free.
Expect updates on EU and US DS browser news in the coming days and weeks.
SPOnG believes that Nintendo has been in talks with every major browser player, though the popularity of Opera in Japan amongst the Macintosh community there has sealed the deal with the independent Java-based softie.
The announcement, made just minutes ago at a press conference in Tokyo, confirmed Internet capabilities for the Japanese market only, though a full global roll-out is expected to be unveiled in the coming weeks.
Opera online functionality will require adopters to purchase a standard DS cartridge, expected to be budget-priced and will make use of Nintendo's market-leading Wi-Fi service.
“Within just five seconds of turning on the system, the Nintendo DS is already fully operational. This makes it the ideal device to enable people to swiftly obtain the latest information from the Internet, wherever they are,” says Masaru Shimomura, Deputy General Manager of Nintendo’s R & D Department in a press release issued this morning. "Opera exceeded our expectations with its user friendly interface, quick access to all your favourite sites, ease of use and, most importantly, in making the best use of the Nintendo DS system’s unique double screens and touch screen features. Opera is an important partner for Nintendo in our efforts to further expand the users of the Nintendo DS."
Nintendo showed a demonstration of the Opera browser highlighting what users can expect. Overcoming the DS' diminutive screen size, the lower screen will represent the whole page with a touchscreen interface controlling a zoomed-in upper screen close up. Handwriting recognition has been confirmed, though expected announcements regarding VoIP were not forthcoming. SPOnG expects free voice calls to form a major part of Nintendo's E3 DS presentation.
No specific launch date was confirmed by NCL, though SPOnG expects the browser will release alongside the DS Lite and will almost certainly be bundled free.
Expect updates on EU and US DS browser news in the coming days and weeks.
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Comments
JonTart 15 Feb 2006 11:58
1/15
Having to pay for a web browser is a bit crappy, they could at least include it on the DS Lite's firmware, plus the fact you've got to carry an extra cartridge around is a tad annoying
Joji 15 Feb 2006 12:16
2/15
At least it has a browser now but I doubt we'll get this one elsewhere, outside japan it'd probably be Firefox instead since I really don't see MS dealing with Nintendo to let em us IE or Netscape. I'd be surprised if we got that Opera browser too.
Either way still a very welcome option.
Either way still a very welcome option.
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tyrion 15 Feb 2006 13:09
3/15
Joji wrote:
At least it has a browser now but I doubt we'll get this one elsewhere, outside japan it'd probably be Firefox instead since I really don't see MS dealing with Nintendo to let em us IE or Netscape. I'd be surprised if we got that Opera browser too.
The Opera browser has been included on several European models of Japanese hardware, including the Sharp Zaurus 5500.
Microsoft has nothing to do with Opera or Netscape, so I dunno why Nintendo would have to deal with MS for anything.
There's no reason that Nintendo won't be able to license Opera for the US and EU releases of this cartridge.
Joji 15 Feb 2006 14:03
4/15
I waqs under the impression that MS bought Netscape to cut down their competition.
Since then Firefox is the latest indie browser giving MS two fingers.
If Opera is good then bring it on.
Since then Firefox is the latest indie browser giving MS two fingers.
If Opera is good then bring it on.
tyrion 15 Feb 2006 18:28
5/15
Joji wrote:
I waqs under the impression that MS bought Netscape to cut down their competition.
AOL bought Netscape so they had a bargaining chip against Microsoft. AOL uses a version of IE for its interface, but if they had Netscape they had an alternative.
Joji wrote:
Since then Firefox is the latest indie browser giving MS two fingers.
The alternative for AOL would have been a Mozilla-based browser like Firefox.
The Mozilla project started under the auspices of Netscape. After Netscape was bought by AOL, the leads on the project convinced their bosses to set up an independent foundation to manage development. That foundation has moved on from the Mozilla project to develop the Firefox browser.
Joji wrote:
If Opera is good then bring it on.
Opera is a very highly regarded browser that suffers from poor marketing, but has a very well established embedded version that is found on devices such as the Zaurus and some mobile phones.
All in all, Nintendo's decision to go with Opera is a good one since it is a simple, quick and standards-compliant browser.
Working as a web engineer gives you a decent perspective on these sorts of things.
Ditto 15 Feb 2006 20:22
6/15
tyrion wrote:
Joji wrote:
Since then Firefox is the latest indie browser giving MS two fingers.
The alternative for AOL would have been a Mozilla-based browser like Firefox.
The Mozilla project started under the auspices of Netscape. After Netscape was bought by AOL, the leads on the project convinced their bosses to set up an independent foundation to manage development. That foundation has moved on from the Mozilla project to develop the Firefox browser.
Yarr. Gekko, the HTML-rendering engine in Firefox, has been around for years and years, ever since the overhyped Netscape 6.
Joji wrote:
If Opera is good then bring it on.
Opera is a very highly regarded browser that suffers from poor marketing, but has a very well established embedded version that is found on devices such as the Zaurus and some mobile phones.
All in all, Nintendo's decision to go with Opera is a good one since it is a simple, quick and standards-compliant browser.
Yeah, Opera is good. Much better than Firefox in many respects, the main issue I have with it is the very cluttered interace. Best choice for Ninty.
Working as a web engineer gives you a decent perspective on these sorts of things.
Have you found that Firefox has very poor cache management, especially in terms of CSS? Something I've noticed since spending all day staring a screen developing web apps.
LUPOS 15 Feb 2006 20:41
7/15
tyrion wrote:
Working as a web engineer gives you a decent perspective on these sorts of things.
im convinced that just using flash is the best and easiest thing to do... has all the data base options... can do anything java or anythign else can... does everythign all the other things work together to do and then some... and works well with all other options... and it looks exactly the same on any browser on anyplatform.
I could make over the spong front page in an hour and have all the skiining options and such to... plus throw in some snazy buttons and animations and not take up an signaficant amount of space... aside from the whole... "you have to have the plug-in" thing... but thats tiny and most of the internet browsing world has it already anyway.
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tyrion 16 Feb 2006 08:50
8/15
Adam M wrote:
Yarr. Gekko, the HTML-rendering engine in Firefox, has been around for years and years, ever since the overhyped Netscape 6.
Since well before that as it happens. The Gecko engine was the final product of a project started in 1998, called NGLayout. The first working browser with NGLayout was an early Mozilla build released at the end of 1998. Netscape 6 was the first Netscape browser with NGLayout/Gecko and was released in 2000, very early and full of bugs.
Adam M wrote:
Yeah, Opera is good. Much better than Firefox in many respects, the main issue I have with it is the very cluttered interace. Best choice for Ninty.
I haven't used the desktop Opera very much, just for checking that sites work in it, but the embedded version was OK on such a limited screen as my Zaurus 5500 had. The PSP browser is quite good too, but I can't see Sony licensing that to Nintendo! :-)
Adam M wrote:
Have you found that Firefox has very poor cache management, especially in terms of CSS? Something I've noticed since spending all day staring a screen developing web apps.
Firefox has a memory leak/feature that caches the rendered page for the last and next 5 pages in the history list, for each tab. As you can imagine that's a lot of data when you have multiple tabs and you are using the back button a lot.
I've actually not used Firefox as much as I have the Mozilla suite (now called SeaMonkey) since I prefer the more details preferences panel (and yes, I do know about:config gives mostly full access). I also prefer SeaMonkey for opening the home page in a new tab without an extension and allowing Ctrl-Q to quit the while program.
That said, I find SeaMonkey's cache system to be great. It's one of the few systems that send the correct headers to clear out cached pages on compliant proxy servers.
I have found that the best way to refresh CSS is with a right click > Reload, works well for external JavaScript too. This works better in framed sites, but it doesn't need the Shift or Ctrl keys to be held down in my experience.
config 16 Feb 2006 10:33
9/15
Adam M wrote:
Have you found that Firefox has very poor cache management, especially in terms of CSS? Something I've noticed since spending all day staring a screen developing web apps.
Not really - well, certainly nothing a shift+reload won't resolve.
miacid 16 Feb 2006 11:10
10/15
How many web developers do we have here then and what do you do? Or for that matter what does everyone else do?
My background is multimedia development although I moved across to web development about 5 years ago, with asp and javascript, now have moved onto .NET with C#.
Can't say I've had the caching issues mentioned with Firefox (my browser of choice), have got mouse gestures setup to do pretty much everything I want. Although I'm currently shackeled to IE.
I'm not a big fan of Flash on the web, although I've used in the past for multimedia. It's fine for doing intros and ad sites but just doesn't cut it for doing sites that have a lot of info, such as SPOnG. You can't beat standard HTML for easy of use for the end user.
I'm not trying to take anything away from Flash it's just I think it has it's place and gets over used too much.
Haven't had that much exposure to Opera, other than for testing, looking forward to seeing how it gets integrated into the DS.
My background is multimedia development although I moved across to web development about 5 years ago, with asp and javascript, now have moved onto .NET with C#.
Can't say I've had the caching issues mentioned with Firefox (my browser of choice), have got mouse gestures setup to do pretty much everything I want. Although I'm currently shackeled to IE.
LUPOS wrote:
im convinced that just using flash is the best and easiest thing to do
I'm not a big fan of Flash on the web, although I've used in the past for multimedia. It's fine for doing intros and ad sites but just doesn't cut it for doing sites that have a lot of info, such as SPOnG. You can't beat standard HTML for easy of use for the end user.
I'm not trying to take anything away from Flash it's just I think it has it's place and gets over used too much.
Haven't had that much exposure to Opera, other than for testing, looking forward to seeing how it gets integrated into the DS.
LUPOS 16 Feb 2006 14:23
11/15
miacid wrote:
I'm not a big fan of Flash on the web, although I've used in the past for multimedia. It's fine for doing intros and ad sites but just doesn't cut it for doing sites that have a lot of info, such as SPOnG.
this is what im currently working on... a bit rough aroudn the edges... colors will be better and the whole thign will be in a pop-up (no menu bar,scrollbars) but all the info is loaded of the syql database and the images and links and movies are all pulled from the database as well.(i didnt design the layout, they gave me a photo shop of what they wanted it to look liek and i just make it work) spongs front page woudl just be a matter of making some simple code to duplicate text boxes based on the string length and avialable area of each section. images and color swaping would be a breeze as well. currently the Media blasters site is only 275 k for the actual flash bit, which isnt to shabby considering its got all the different graphics and such... specialy since most web sites are doing such a minimalist design aproach latley, vectors are especially worth while.
a year ago i woudl have agreed but now that i've seen hwo easy all the database comunication si with flash i dont see any advnatages to anything else.
also your question about what we do, i am currently makeing the website for my company (as you can see) but im also head of the newly formed games devision. we will be importing/localizing a wide variety of japaneese games that woudl other wise never come over here (the US, who knows about euopre, UK maybe). mostly we will be doing anime tie-ins.
oh and I do a bit of writing for SPOnG here as well. See the lovely DOA4 review for refference :)
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miacid 16 Feb 2006 16:12
12/15
I like what you've done, be interesting to see how it pans out when you've got some more info up there.
I total agree with you about pulling everything in from a database, although I'm still in two minds whether or not the SPOnG site would look better in flash. I'm thinking it's best off using a server side scripting language as they are at the moment, it's quicker especially as SPOnG is very much information based, think flash could just get in the way.
Then again I'm probably biased as I use the normal skin with Firefoxs' adblock (with 'support website' on), don't really go for flash sites, I just like to get the information. Perhaps something like play.com/playusa.com could be the way forward as it gives the information you want while adding the window dressing around the outside.
Good luck with your new role, might have to start a new thread to see what everyone else does.
I total agree with you about pulling everything in from a database, although I'm still in two minds whether or not the SPOnG site would look better in flash. I'm thinking it's best off using a server side scripting language as they are at the moment, it's quicker especially as SPOnG is very much information based, think flash could just get in the way.
Then again I'm probably biased as I use the normal skin with Firefoxs' adblock (with 'support website' on), don't really go for flash sites, I just like to get the information. Perhaps something like play.com/playusa.com could be the way forward as it gives the information you want while adding the window dressing around the outside.
Good luck with your new role, might have to start a new thread to see what everyone else does.
LUPOS 16 Feb 2006 17:04
13/15
Thanks! :)
as for the spong thing i dotn know that it would make it any better or faster persay, im just saying that it could all be done within a single flash file where as before flashmx had the remoting capability added to it a few years back it woudl have been either impossible/ or a damn ugly pain in the ass mess... as flash woudl have had to send commands out to other languages that woudl then handle the queires and then generate text files that flash woudl then import and parse. which is amazingly convoluted and difficult... remoting just defines a cfc files as a gateway and then gets refferenced just liek any other flash function, very simple and flexible... and its my undeerstanding it runs even quicker in 8... but im doing this all in 7 as its a safer bet that people will have the correct plug-in already.
flash is zee futrure... thats why MS is scrambelign to counter it with their own rip off and why adobe bought them, cause they know the internet is only going ot get more interactive and dynamic, and no one package does half of what flash and the whole MX family can do.
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as for the spong thing i dotn know that it would make it any better or faster persay, im just saying that it could all be done within a single flash file where as before flashmx had the remoting capability added to it a few years back it woudl have been either impossible/ or a damn ugly pain in the ass mess... as flash woudl have had to send commands out to other languages that woudl then handle the queires and then generate text files that flash woudl then import and parse. which is amazingly convoluted and difficult... remoting just defines a cfc files as a gateway and then gets refferenced just liek any other flash function, very simple and flexible... and its my undeerstanding it runs even quicker in 8... but im doing this all in 7 as its a safer bet that people will have the correct plug-in already.
flash is zee futrure... thats why MS is scrambelign to counter it with their own rip off and why adobe bought them, cause they know the internet is only going ot get more interactive and dynamic, and no one package does half of what flash and the whole MX family can do.
_____
miacid 16 Feb 2006 17:21
14/15
I think you could be right about Flash being the future for the web, most large commercial corp's I can think of have a flash presence on their site.
I see your point about being able to have the whole site in one flash file, haven't been involved with flash for well over a year, so a bit rusty. It appears it would be completely possible to do the entire site in one file, which is a god send. Will hopefully be getting back into more of the multimedia side of things in the next 6 months.
Also hoping that Adobe keep Authorware alive as it's had a rocky few years. I'm not surprised MS are trying to clone Flash, as I'm sure they were sniffing around before Adobe snapped up Macromedia.
I see your point about being able to have the whole site in one flash file, haven't been involved with flash for well over a year, so a bit rusty. It appears it would be completely possible to do the entire site in one file, which is a god send. Will hopefully be getting back into more of the multimedia side of things in the next 6 months.
Also hoping that Adobe keep Authorware alive as it's had a rocky few years. I'm not surprised MS are trying to clone Flash, as I'm sure they were sniffing around before Adobe snapped up Macromedia.
Ditto 16 Feb 2006 20:42
15/15
I don't mean to be nasty, but your site kinda summarises the reasons most people don't use Flash for whole websites.
Flash doesn't work for sites with a lot of information, it's too hard to scroll. Some Flash site designers don't put "proper" scrollbars on and therefore you don't know how much information there is. Mouse scroll wheels typically don't work either, and most people use these to scroll through text.
People who use Flash on websites get carried away with adding special effects that just aren't needed, and tend to prevent people reading the information.
Site nagivation becomes complex because Flash site designers tend to hide menu options forcing the users to scroll through them. Actions such as back, forward, refresh don't work as users expect which confuses the hell out of them.
Flash doesn't work for sites with a lot of information, it's too hard to scroll. Some Flash site designers don't put "proper" scrollbars on and therefore you don't know how much information there is. Mouse scroll wheels typically don't work either, and most people use these to scroll through text.
People who use Flash on websites get carried away with adding special effects that just aren't needed, and tend to prevent people reading the information.
Site nagivation becomes complex because Flash site designers tend to hide menu options forcing the users to scroll through them. Actions such as back, forward, refresh don't work as users expect which confuses the hell out of them.