The Web for Devices
Words by Daniel Aleksandersen on 2006-10-15
When I have written about making Websites available for devices in the past; I have consequently only addressed handheld devices such as mobile phones. But as Opera's gallery of Opera powered devices proves - there is a lot more to the term!
Of course the main issue still lies with the handhelds. Due to the fact that the screen size is just so different from the one you will find on computers and other devices. But what you will have to think of, something that I sadly have not, is that some handhelds has wide-screen displays. Rendering previous attempts of adapting the site; useless.
But screen size is also important when working on making Websites compatible with the Nintendo Wii game console. It ships with the Opera Web-browser, but the console’s controlling system makes scrolling something to be avoided, because it is nearly impossible to navigate pages with it. Otherwise no one will be able to access the content due to the navigation limitations those controllers are bound to have! So Web-pages must be more like the Opera slide show feature than regular Web-pages.
But what to do? What to do!?
This is the thoughts I believe all readers will have by now. There is no simple solution, but I can make a general recommendation: Make two Web-pages and make platform dependent links between them:
1. Make a lightweight version of the page with only limited navigation and stripped to-the-point content. Scale down the images and keep the CSS design simple. This will be the hand held accessible version of your page. Make sure to put a link at the very top where you link to the regular version. This link could be platform dependent and only be visible to users visiting the site from a regular Web browser or such.
2. Make a regular, but scalable version of the Website where you will keep the normal, and fancy CSS design and visuals. But as above, make a link at the very top to the handheld version. Be sure to make a projection style sheet (for TV screens and devices such as the Wii) for the Website as well, where you scale and strip down navigation.
This practice should keep you on the safe, accessible side of things. And of course: No Flash on either versions!
3 comments
I think designing Web sites for the Wii console should apply to Web sites mainly addressed for the console, such as cheat codes and game guides.
While there is a possibility people might surf regular pages on the console, I would guess people would still more commonly use a computer.
Magnus at 2006-11-15 @051.
But why limit the reach of your content?
Daniel Aleksandersen at 2006-12-27 @185.
[...] Now who the heck can argue that it was not worth spending those six hours making sure the Website worked fine on regular TV screens and where compatible with the Wii's rendering engine for that one visitor!? Well it is actually great seeing people starting to embraced the internet on more un-traditional platforms, such as Nintendo's new game console. And those six hours was not really just for the Wii's sake, but also for Opera version 8 back-wards compatibility. The Web for devices is here to say folks! [...]
First Wii-sitor at Open Source Notebook at 2007-01-08 @529.
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