Blogging With Opera for Wii

I am writing this entry using Opera for Wii. I’m also hoping that I’m the first person to do so. Mainly so that I beat Joystiq to it, but also for the sheer novelty of it.

Opera for Wii isn’t a massive download. It took me less then a minute to download it on an 8mbit connection.
It’s quite nippy as a browser as well, easily equalling the performance of Firefox 2.

It’s layout is very simple. Along the bottom of the screen is a bar with the Back, Forwards, Refresh/stop, Favorites and Start buttons. When you start up the Opera Channel you are presented with the Start Screen witch gives you the option to enter a URL or go to a favorite page or the help screen.

All text is input using the Wii-mote and the on-screen keyboard. This feels very natural, however it is very time consuming. There is predictive text, but I’ve only been using it to check my spelling. It also has a few bugs in it, for example, it doesn’t let you write a word in capitals using the shift key.

Web-pages are hard to see on default zoom, [At this point, the on-screen keyboard refused to let me input further text and I resorted to my trusty MacBook]

Web-pages are hard to see on default zoom, but you can zoom in with the + and – buttons. Unfortunately this means that on many web-pages you will have to scroll from side to side as well as up and down. Scrolling is done using the B-button and pointing the Wii-mote up or down. It feels a bit awkward, but is certainly usable.

I cannot see Opera for Wii becoming a replacement to a computer based browser. On a standard sized CRT, it just doesn’t do the job well enough. The limit on text input is also annoying and limiting. Time will tell however, since this is the trial version and I will hold off my final verdict until I see Opera’s final launch version and it’s performance on a 720i television.