It's inevitable that our production team has divided opinions on the Adobe and Apple issue over Flash and its legitimacy in mobile browsing. The Flash developers are sided with Adobe -- mainly because Flash is their livelihood -- while Javascript developers are sided with Apple since we don't rely on Flash. Both Adobe and Apple are claiming their platforms are "more open" than the other but I will try to make my argument based on personal experience.
After working with the Nintendo Wii and experiencing first hand the difficulties in developing for such a platform, I was utterly frustrated by the lack of support provided by both Nintendo and Adobe; there is NO support. Does Flash work on the Nintendo Wii? Yes. Does it work well? No. Were there a lot of problems? YES. Did Adobe fix those problems? Some, but only YEARS after Flash was available for the Wii. Are there still problems? Yes, absolutely.
Both parties are claiming how their platforms "should be considered" as open; which really isn't "open" at all. The goals of open standards are not the same as those for profit-generating businesses. It is currently not in Adobe's best profit-generating interests to fix their issues on the Nintendo Wii so the platform has been left broken. As a result, the developers are left to find web solutions for clients who have been assured by Nintendo and Apple that "Flash works on the Wii"; which it doesn't.
Do I want a similar fate for other mobile devices? Absolutely not.
Showing posts with label Wii. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wii. Show all posts
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Practical applications to reverse-engineering
I find myself spending a lot of time reverse-engineering other people’s work. That is, it’s rather typical that clients have existing systems and frameworks where the amount of documentation is tragically inadequate. The trick is to learn as much as you can about the author(s) and then emulate what they’ve done. And although it’s rather cliché to say this, you really can learn a lot about a person by sifting through their code.
I was working on a project last year which involved developing work specifically targeted for the Nintendo Wii browser. Even though it is powered by Opera, it doesn’t behave the same way as its desktop cousin. The issues are compounded by the fact that there is no official documentation from either Nintendo of America, Europe or Japan; thus it was necessary to break down the issues myself. The full list is a lot more explicit so I’ll simply fire off some of the most glaring facts:
- There lacks metrical data to gauge the user's environment. The following issues remain unresolved:
- There are different Nintendo Wii browser versions and they’re linked to firmware patches.
- There are different versions of Adobe Flash for the Wii browsers. While one version of Flash can handle video well, the other doesn't.
- During the initial launch of the console, the Wii browser costed $5. Someone found a hack to enable one of the apps –which then allowed for a modified version of the onboard browser to run: The legitimate $5 browser had a different resolution than the hacked. In 2009, the decision was made to offer the Wii browser at no charge, but the divide was already set.
- What are the dimensions one can work with on the Wii browser? 800x600? No. An obscure width to the likes of 813px. What’s even more strange is that when the <BODY> has a CSS width of 100%, any <DIV> set to “100%” will be locked at 813px.
- The Wii has a feature that allows users to zoom in and out of the page. This feature – coupled with the onscreen menu — throws Javascript haywire because the viewable screen height constantly changes.
- Anchor tags <A> as well as tags which can be clicked (ie. adding the Javascript function "location" to a div) will always have a visible border around it. I've yet to find a CSS or Javascript solution to this unsightly issue.
From this experience, I can only conclude that web development experts weren’t initially consulted by Nintendo before the browser was integrated onto their console. Since I don’t personally own a Wii, the likelihood that I'd develop personal work for such a platform is very slim. In any case, good luck to all those who have an interest in it!
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Streaming media
Nintendo recently announced that they've partnered with NetFlix in order to stream on-demand movies from their Wii platform. I'm sure this deal with a lucrative one for Nintendo, but I can't help but think of it as an unsafe business move. With both Microsoft and Sony prepping to release their own motion-sensing peripherals, how will Nintendo stay competitive?
First and foremost, I would think that consoles need to be able to play games and play a large selection of games. I don't need my console to stream movies or produce a slideshow of my vacation photos or connect to the weather channel. I bought it because I want to play games. That said, what has Nintendo done to attract developers to their platform?
Both Sony and Microsoft have put a lot of time, effort and money into creating development tools and packages that give developers the ability to produce games. This is vital for a healthy development community. If there is a limited number of developers creating games for the Wii, there is a limited number of games.
And what is the value in buying a console when there aren't any good games for it?
First and foremost, I would think that consoles need to be able to play games and play a large selection of games. I don't need my console to stream movies or produce a slideshow of my vacation photos or connect to the weather channel. I bought it because I want to play games. That said, what has Nintendo done to attract developers to their platform?
Both Sony and Microsoft have put a lot of time, effort and money into creating development tools and packages that give developers the ability to produce games. This is vital for a healthy development community. If there is a limited number of developers creating games for the Wii, there is a limited number of games.
And what is the value in buying a console when there aren't any good games for it?
Saturday, October 3, 2009
(Not) Found on the internet
Over the past six months, I had been working quite intensely on Nintendo-related projects that include developing work to be viewed on the Nintendo Wii browser. The whole experience has been quite frustrating since -- unlike Xbox or PS3 -- there are no official “Nintendo-sanctioned” devkits or resources to assist the dev community in the development of webpages for their browser. Consequently, anyone looking to develop for the Wii platform must rely heavily on the internet to solve their problems.
This in itself is a paradox. Developers don’t develop for the Wii browser because there are no resources. There are no resources because the development community isn’t large enough where people can and/or are willing to write them.
I had been thinking about whether to post my findings on Wikipedia but I’ve opted against it. I don’t want this work thought of as being “official” on any level. However, I do recognize there are a lot of differences between the Wii and Opera browser engine from which it is based upon and these findings are better off distributed to the public. Instead of releasing all the information I’ve accumulated, I will try to post entries that relate specifically to Javascript development and limitations inherent with the Wii.
In other words: those who have no interest in Wii development are going to see this blog as becoming very boring, very fast.
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