As much as i'd love to have such things, I'll still be buying because internet services are essential really.

Reply

I honestly don't know if I'll buy it or not. Those seem like pretty big features to be missing. Hopefully they will release new versions of it as new versions of Opera come out, or perhaps they are able to let you download upgrades directly to your Opera DS card.

Also, what ever happened to the TV tuner Nintendo announced side by side with this browser??? (sorry if that's too off topic)

Reply

So what can we do with it then?

Reply

I'm not really sure that this is any fault of Opera. After all, flash is a browser plugin, not a part of the browser itself, and if Macromedia/Adobe doesn't make a version for the OS that the DS runs on, there's not a whole lot that Opera can do about that :( Same goes for PDF functionality.

Is the DS capable of showing video files natively (without some homebrew thing)? I'm a pretty new DS owner and I know I haven't scratched the surface of the thing yet. If it can't, you're back at the limitations of the device, not the browser.

All that being said, I'm still going to get it. The more time I spend online the more I realize that flash, pdf, etc. is not the content that I'm interested in. Of course, I may be in the minority ...

Reply

Aww that sucks.

And where is that TV tuner anyway? Oh wait, that TV tuner isn't functional in any place but Japan so, screw it. :(

Reply

"I'm not really sure that this is any fault of Opera. "

There is open source code for parsing PDF's, so they could have easily added that.

As far as flash, there is open source code for reading older versions of flash files, anything up to V6 (V9 was just released yesterday), so they could have included that.

Same with video, and sound. That's a problem that has been solved many times...but perhaps they just didn't have the resources to devote to developing this. I'm not sure if the DS would be powerful enough to play most online videos, but it is definately powerful enough to play your standard mp3, wmv, ogg, etc.

Reply

Meh, at work I have none of the above and I still get around the internet fine. You just wait until you get home slash to a normal computer to view what you wanted to view.
One is not going to buy a DS for just the browser, thus a meer 30 some dollars is nothing to add a nice feature such as portable email/news checking.
If you really can't live without the above stated features you then spend the 200-300 bucks and get a Palm/Windows Mobile handheld that can handle you're internet needs.

Reply

Who's to say that an newer, better version of the browser won't come out? Maybe a new version would include an optional GBA cartridge to store extra stuff, such as a flash player, .pdf reader, etc.

We can never know the limitations of optional accessories that Nintendo could put out for the DS browser.

Reply

I'm sure that any limitations of the browser are due to the limitations of the DS. I mean, they had to add a cartridge for more memory. It only has what, like 4mb standard?

Anyways, I was wondering why the bookmarked pages will not show images...do you mean saved pages will not store images? If it's a bookmark, it should just be a little piece of text to link to the site, right?

Reply

Honestly I really dont care about flash, pdf's, videos and sound files.

Most of the websites that I visit are blogs, message boards, ebay and my email.

So it really isnt going to do much. Its portable and will be a much better option than carrying my laptop around all day long getting on the net a few times. Having to find a decent spot to sit, when I can just pop out my DS and get onto the net.

Reply

#9, it's a misprint in the post. IGN says you CAN save bookmarks on the DS, but you CAN'T save images on the DS. It doesn't say anything about images in the bookmarked page.

The missing features aren't that big a deal, considering this isn't supposed to be a PC replacement. PDF or Flash support aren't vital. I do watch a lot of videos online, but I can see how that'd be a hardware problem. And without Flash or video, I don't really need sound.

Reply

ehh, i already have my htc wizard(8125) for wifi internetss...but i still think this is a nice add-on, opera makes great web-browsers, and if this is nething like the pocket pc version i bought($24.95 i think)then it will be great, after all, we can wait till were home to view flash and watch videos, im pretty sure plenty of people will get this

Reply

http://www.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nintendo.co.jp%2Fds%2Fbrowser%2Findex.html&langpair=ja%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF8

Eh, I think some of that means no GIF? Probably means video...

Reply

I don't really see what's the point of having a web browser on my DS anyway. So no, I won't buy it.

Reply

Hey, why don't one of you reviewer types who gets your hands on the browser go to some common sites and tell us if they work. Will ajax type stuff like meebo work? What about gmail? Give us an idea of what works and what doesn't. Do we really need the newest jackass dancing to a techno song youtube video on our DS? No.

Reply

I dunno. Maybe visit Joystiq and DS Fanboy?

Reply

The word that google translates moving image, only means that in the literal sense of the word. According to a computer dictionary the word is means video or motion picture. I'm thinking it refers to .mov's .wmv's .asf's and the like.

Reply

The DS is NOT nearly powerful enough to run Flash... A lot of *desktop computers* still struggle with complex Flash stuff. Trust me, I'm a full-time Flash developer and I know it's limitations. Bringing it to the DS and having it work well is **IMPOSSIBLE**

As for videos, not having Flash eliminates almost 50% of the videos on the web... As for the other formats, do you really expect the browser to be able to have Windows Media Player, Quicktime, and Realplayer all bundled in? It's just not possible, and there is NO WAY this ever would have been possible.

Audio might have been possible, but it also would have complicated things and it's really not necessary.

The browser still has everything I expected, so I'll definitely be buying it... I don't know why people expect the DS to be as powerful and full featured as a PC... It's a portable device, beggars can't be choosers.

-Matt

Reply

I was just about to post what Matt Rix just posted. But he beat me to it. Obviously I second what he says. These aren't really possible, I didn't expect them on my DS anyway, but it still has what's necessary for most webbrowsing. Hundred dollar Cell phones for ages had very limited versions of the internet browsing capability... the DS is a very cheap device, and this browser is even cheaper and it's getting more out of the web browsing experience right off the bat.

Reply

The browser won't be capable of displaying Flash and PDF, nor will it support video and sound. While you can save bookmarks to your favorite pages, you cannot save images or other elements of pages.

Reply