How many clicks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of good usability?
Growing parallel to the video game industry, Internet users are aware of the incremental innovations that have become defining characteristics of gaming platforms, most notably in controllers, the interface by which you manipulate the on screen action. Initially more buttons meant more control. Atari gave us one, then we got D-pads, shoulder buttons, auto-fire, triggers, etc.. At some point between Playstation's 16 buttons w/ dual joysticks, and Jaguar's 18-26 buttons (depending on how you Do The Math), people got confused. Parents stopped playing with kids and casual gamers fell off the map; innovation turned into isolation.
Nintendo led a return to basics with Gamecube's large A button and colorful/ergonomic style; but there was another idea lurking on the drawing board. Back in the NES days, it wasn't uncommon to see people swing controllers in a boss fight, tilt their body as they drive, or jerk the pad up when they made Mario jump, particularly parents and casual players long forgotten. It was Nintendo's innovative concept of allowing what came naturally to be a form of control that helped springboard them from third place to first with the introduction of Wii's simple 10 [action] button controller. Removing complexity lowered barriers to entry and the market grew.
Opera has done similar things for browsing. No, I'm not talking about Mouse Gestures. About two years ago Opera introduced a feature that got my parents to switch browsers: Opera 9.2 added support for automatic searching from the address bar when users enter more than one word. How many times in the past have people opened a tab, clicked that address bar and started typing only to get a 404 error?
"Oops, ...error?" "You gotta search from the Google box, Dad." "The what?"
By capturing the actions that came naturally to users, Opera decreased confusion and the time it takes to get to the information you seek by a few more clicks. You see, there are more ways to make browsing faster than refining the way pages render. The fewer clicks needed to find what you seek, the better the experience, and if you can minimize confusion along the way, even better. Opera makes browsing as simple as one, two, three.
To save a few more clicks and answer the age old question: It's approximately 400.
Everyone enjoying thier (trial version) Wii browsers? I nearly missed my train trying out different sites and browsing around the community. But i'm typing this safely from the train now, so i made it (thanks opera mini).
While browsing i was pleased to see some ofmust have imagined Opera's 'mouse gestures' mapped successfully to the Wii remote. here's what i found this morning: Hold B to scroll w/ pointer. Hold B and move quick to the left or right for Back and Forward respectively. Update: I must have dreamt this, but I went back by accident, then went forward. has anyone else got this to work, or am i being drugged? press 2 for an alternate view (small screen rendering) that makes reading easier for some. + and - to zoom in and out.
Has anyone found any more? and what do you think of the controls in the trial version so far?
Without repeating too much of what Jon already touched on in his hands on preview of the Opera Browser on DS, I wanted to offer my impressions of the software and go into some additional detail for those interested, which is probably millions of rabid Nintendo fans, Opera enthusiasts, gadget junkies, early adopters, and curious fence sitters still holding out for more information.
Being a fan of Nintendo products for 2 decades, and a current Opera 9 and Opera Mini 2 enthusiast, it’s safe to say I had high expectations of quality, simplicity, and intuitive features walking into the room Tuesday morning before the Opera 9 launch party. Little did I know those expectations would be surpassed by the prototype cartridge (of all things) in mere minutes of use.
Sure, Bram Cohen (Father of BitTorrent) and Jon von Tetzchner (CEO and Founder of Opera Software) were among the guests in the room that day, both giving presentations and eating lunch with Jon and I, but I don’t think our eyes peeled away from the table where a solitary DS lite sat with the sun lighting up it’s glazed housing all morning, the GBA cover removed. We knew it was here.
As soon as the presentations were over, we scampered over to the table and fondled the DS lite until our buddy Brian Johnson (Opera Community Manager) waltzed over and presented us with two grey bits: the Opera DS prototype Card and the GBA RAM Cartridge (no announcements have been made for RAM cartridge use beyond the Opera DS Browser).
Plugging them in and turning the system on in a normal fashion, I asked Brian if there was “anything special I had to do to—I …guess not.” Online like that! Brian said it is the same as setting up to connect to any WiFi hotspot as you would a normal DS Game that has WiFi connectivity. So if you were trying to connect to a router with a WEP Key, you would need to handle that in advance and save your setting. The WiFi in the banquet room was open for free access and just as fast as you would have expected any other Opera browser to be, I was already accessing my blog on my.opera (pictures of my blog below), looking at eBay, and checking my web mail. All of this was so intuitive I hadn’t realized I wasn’t even asking for instructions, its seriously that intuitive.
There were two display settings I often switched between to get a good feel for what the browser was capable of. The first mode has a full screen view of the web page on one screen and a zoomed in version on the other. At any time you can swap the screens. If you have the full screen mode on top and the zoom view on the bottom, you can drag around the bottom page to move your view; when you do this a screen highlight shows on the top screen giving you an outline of the portion you are focusing on. If you swap the screens so that the full screen view is on the bottom and zoomed view on top, you drag the outline and the zoomed view above shows you what you have placed the outline on. Scrolling is smooth and easy. I really like this new way of having two views of a page at once, and no it is not and does not get annoying.
The other viewing mode scaled web pages to fit the width of the DS but spread vertically over both screens, the same thing Opera Mini 2 users are used to. If you are using Opera 9 right now and switch to small screen mode, it’s basically the same thing. That’s because Opera uses the same code in all of it’s browsers, so you can be absolutely sure the quality browsing experience they offer on a desktop PC and on your mobile phone is the same secure, fast and intuitive software, this time designed to take full advantage of the Nintendo DS’s dual screens, hardware buttons (for fast access to modes and shortcuts), and of course the touch screen.
Across the far top and bottom of the screen are tiny toolbars that display site info and provide easy access to an entire host of web navigation features you would expect in the form of little icons. Touching and holding on them displays a polite tool tip letting you know what they are but memorization took mere seconds since they have familiar icons already. There is even a nifty dual screen logo that animates in the top tool bar when loading.
Clicking links is performed by either selecting them with the D-Pad and pressing A or on the bottom screen by tapping them. When tapped, a link sparkles a bit with some orange circles that animate out of it, letting you know you’ve clicked it, a nice touch that shows Opera put many man hours in on this design, enough to know that visual cues would be an eye-pleasing addition to browsing on a smaller screen.
For text boxes, when clicked, the bottom screen gets a touch keyboard similar to what you find in picto-chat, but with some Opera touches and other commands to make web use more of a pleasure than a hassle. Typing is fast and responsive; text can be entered as fast as you can move. There is also a customizable handwriting and shortcut style for entering information (screenshot below).
Favorites are saved in a customizable folder tree.
The fonts are incredibly sharp. I didn’t come across a single page where I thought it didn’t look perfect. As a side note, I’d like to mention that there is a help system built in that mimics a web page itself, so as you are learning the ins and outs of the software, it is secretly giving you some initial experience with the controls, reducing the learning curve ever so slightly.
Signal strength is displayed in the far top left and as with any DS game, you can be anywhere in the room and have a full strength signal. I couldn't leave the room however, because Jon (CEO Jon) would have crushed me with his viking strength.
I’d like to point out that Jon and I were only testing a prototype version on a DS lite, so the GBA RAM cart was sticking out a bit and the DS Card was a rewritable development card (the final product will be the same size as a regular DS game).
There has been box art revealed that shows a DS lite version and an original DS version. I speculate that the only difference is the shape and look of the RAM cartridge for the GBA slot. As many of you already know, Nintendo released a smaller DS lite version of the DS Rumble Pak in Japan, so it seems they are going to create a smaller aesthetically pleasing DS lite RAM cart as well to keep your lite looking small, smooth, and sexy at all times, nothing sticking out, no matter what software you’ve got in it.
Downloading and storing things like music on the RAM cart is not supported so don’t expect to use this as a mass storage device. One reporter at the event did have a pretty inventive idea, he speculated creating a web page hosted at home that he could log into over the web and control his home audio via a DS friendly web interface. That got me thinking, and now I have plans to do something similar, but incorporate home lighting and other processes so I can have full control of my house from any WiFi hotspot. I will chart my progress as I go forward.
Available in Europe, the US, and Japan for about $32, distribution is to be initially handled online (similar to the Play-Yan media device and the Nintendo WiFi Connection USB adapter). That means that for the millions and millions of DS and DS lite owners, the whole Internet is about $32 away. For others, $129 for the DS lite and $32 for the browser is still the cheapest, fastest, most secure and reliable path to the Internet available to date.
With companies like Nintendo and Opera working together to make it happen, you can trust the quality of the experience will be unsurpassed.
Everyone loved Capcom's first Wii zombie shooter, Resident Evil 4, so Capcom decided to port another such title over to the Wii: Dead Rising. The 360 game, along with an amazing subtitle (Chop Til You Drop), is being ported to the Wii using the Resident Evil 4 engine. Chop Til You Drop will inclu ...
Virtual Console
NEW+ Super Fantasy Zone (Sega Genesis, 1 player, Rated E for Everyone Mild Cartoon Violence, 900 Wii Points):
The last entry in the Fantasy Zone series, this side-scrolling shooter puts you in the shoes of main character Opa-Opa, who is on a mission to avenge the death of his fath ...
This is yet a rumor because there's no official release date (at least not announced yet), BUT Play.com alredady lists Pikmin 3 for Wii with a pre-order link and a release date for March 27th, 2009 (EU release!!).
Why might this be the real deal? Well, because it's still a far away date and becaus ...
I say rumor only because I don't want it to be true. The above image, apparently the cover of the September issue of Nintendo Power, reveals "Sonic and the Black Knight" as a Wii exclusive. No information on the title is available yet, but stay tuned to N+ for developments.
On a side note, WHY T ...
It's a WiiWare week, with two third party games. One has to do with pirates, the other is tyre racing. Unfortunately I couldn't find a picture of a pirate with a tyre, so we'll have to do with one on the moon. It's practically the same thing.
Virtual Console
None this week. :(
The updated list ...
By capturing the actions that came naturally to users, Opera decreased confusion and the time it takes to get to the information you seek by a few more clicks. You see, there are more ways to make browsing faster than refining the way pages render. The fewer clicks needed to find what you seek, the better the experience, and if you can minimize confusion along the way, even better. Opera makes browsing as simple as one, two, three.
(50%)
WIDGETIZE