Sean's Technology and Writing Blog

Opera Browser for Nintendo DS: Webpage design guidelines

12 April 2007

You might remember I launched a site dedicated to the Nintendo DS browser at www.sean.co.uk/nds last month, including a couple of Javascript games.

I've now written some guidelines for how to design websites for the Nintendo DS. The use of the touchscreen, the small screens and the different browsing modes present several website design challenges. I hope that this guide will help to clarify them. When I was designing my site, I couldn't find this information in one place, so I've compiled the specifications and written some tips on making sites that are easy to use, based on my own NDS browsing experience.

Many of the design issues are the same as for other mobile devices, and there's a big crossover with accessibility. Sites that are accessible tend to work well when the design is stripped out, which makes them work better on more limited platforms. That's one more way that the investment in creating accessible sites pays off.

Labels: nintendo, webdesign

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Comments

The Aquarium works like Twitter. Seems to work fine on my DS Browser.

www.bluefugu.info/aquarium

The source code is also available for the aquarium.

# posted by

Anonymous : 4:58 am

So you would be the developer of The Aquarium, I take it, anonyous?

You've got a nice script running, but it's much more basic than Twitter. What makes Twitter work (if anything) is the user accounts and community aspect - the way that you can identify posters and trace their life over time. The Aquarium appears to be a place for anyone to pop in and anonymously post anything which is then shown on the screen.

It could form the basis of a DS community, though, given it's DS compatible and the source is available, so thanks for letting us all know about it.

# posted by

Sean McManus : 1:27 pm

I have done some AJAX experimentation on the Nintendo DS browser, and have found a programming technique that works.

Use a hidden iframe to load XML documents in the background. (Replaces XMLHttpRequest)

You need a callback hook in the XML to be able to continue the action when the page has loaded.
<body onload="javascript:if (parent.callback) parent.callback();">

Use the innerHTML DOM element attribute to insert the new content in the main page.

# posted by

Anonymous : 12:01 pm

Thanks, Marcus.

Do you have a demo of this online somewhere?

It would be great to see some real AJAX action on the DS (eg a demo menu interface). But I guess the problem remains that AJAX features as coded for mainstream browsers won't work on the DS browser, so there will still be a compatibility issue.

# posted by

Sean McManus : 1:25 pm

I haven't put the application online yet, but I plan to do it soon. I will let you know.

# posted by

Anonymous : 8:49 pm

http://mobilist.se/ is an application with ajax functionality that works in the Nintendo DS Browser. It is a shopping list manager, and uses ajax to update parts of the page when you add and remove items on the list, and also for popups. Unfortunately, it is in Swedish only, but anyone should be able to test the ajax functions if interested.

First, register by typing your email address in the 'Epost:' field at the top of the page and click on 'Registrera mig'. A temporary password will be sent to the address. To log in, write the password in the 'Lösen:' field together with the email in 'Epost:' and click on 'Logga in'.

In the edit page, a click on an item to the left side will add it to the list on the right side. Click on an item to the right and it will be removed from the list again. Click on '»' links to open a popup and load the content.

# posted by

Anonymous : 9:55 am

Hi Marcus.

Thanks for that link. I gave it a go but couldn't see the AJAX effect working - I couldn't tell whether the server had hung or whether it was just incredibly slow, but after a couple of minutes the list hadn't changed. The overview mode isn't really ideal for this kind of thing - it would work better if something was designed so that you could edit the list on the bottom screen and view it on the top.

But it's encouraging to see that people are finding AJAX workarounds for mobile devices. The only drawback is that they still appear to require special coding for mobile devices, rather than making it possible to access normal AJAX sites on a mobile browser.

The smooth visual effects of AJAX should be relatively easy to fake, but the live updating from the server might work out too slow on the DS to be viable. It might be better for data (in a shopping list application, for example), to be stored locally and then be sent in a batch to the server in a 'save' function. The difficulty will be with true AJAX stuff which retrieves data from the server in real time - I suspect it will be limited to tiny or highly compressed data packets to sustain the illusion of immediate updating given the DS's sluggish connection speed.

# posted by

Sean McManus : 6:15 pm

Hi Guys,
I was given a NintendoDS Lite for Christmas 2007. I bought the browser and wrote a program in VB.NET to view two webcams. It works great on the NintendoDS. Check it out at http://uk.geocities.com/eafin2004/index.html
Regards to all
Eric

# posted by

Anonymous : 10:04 am

Thanks for your comment, Eric. Looks like a nice effect you've achieved there. The correct link for your post though is:
http://uk.geocities.com/eafin2004/index.htm

# posted by

Sean McManus : 9:34 pm

eR XeXu - thanks for your comment, which I've declined to publish because it had an email address in it, which I cannot validate is yours.

Regarding your claim that the browser supports Flash sites, please provide a specific example. The browser might support sites that include Flash, but it cannot render the Flash elements of such sites under any circumstances.

# posted by

Sean McManus : 8:27 am

Hello

Is it possible to access Yahoo
e mail, webmail via the web browser.

Is it any good?

Are there any limitations?

I am just about to purchase a ds browser pack and wanted to check the above is possible and it works ok?

Thank You

# posted by

Anonymous : 12:58 pm

I haven't tested Yahoo recently, so I can't remember how effective that is. Webmail tends to work quite well, particularly if accessed using a mobile version of the service (eg Gmail's mobile site). The device isn't ideal for email though, because there's no keyboard and it's a bit slow. If your preferred email provider worked well, it would be best used for checking if there's anything you need to address urgently on your PC, rather than for processing all your emails on the NDS itself.

# posted by

Sean McManus : 4:50 pm

could the browser use tabs if you went here? please test

http://brentalan.com/wiitabs/

# posted by

Anonymous : 10:59 pm

No, that doesn't work. There's no support for Flash on the DS, and I can't even get the HTML part of the page to display on the DS, for some reason. There was an implementation of tabbed browsing on the DS previously which I believe is no longer online. Given that the device is a bit slow, you probably don't want to slow it down further with tabs anyway.

# posted by

Sean McManus : 1:05 pm

Thanks for this site - I have set it as my home page because as a new ds surfer I need a bit of a kick start as to where I can visit on the www...

# posted by

Anonymous : 11:25 pm

I hope you still get rss from here!
Okay, first off, I am currently on a DSi, and working on a website I own.
Although I have some altercations to CSS, I want to create a CSS to detect whether the device is Pc or mobile and load pages in that format. If you could help, I would greatly apreciate it :)

My email is 1disturbed1s@gmail.com
And the Site URL is Http://dsifunclubs.webs.com if you are interested.
{if that link does not work, remove .webs , I am currently processing with a webhost to get a .com domain}
Thanks for any help!

# posted by

Unknown : 1:34 am

Hi Dylan. Thanks for your comment. The Nintendo DS browser recognises style sheets for handheld devices when in the SSR mode. That means you can get it to use a style sheet specially designed for it by adding media="handheld" to your CSS declaration:

For example:
[link rel="stylesheet" href="nds-style.css" type="text/css" media="handheld"]

But using proper HTML pointy brackets and not those square ones, above.

This style sheet will also be used by other devices that consider themselves to be handhelds. Apple devices don't, as a rule: they will usually use the same style sheet as the screen.

There's more about targeting style sheets in my book 'Web Design in Easy Steps', especially for creating a printer-friendly page using CSS.

Hope this pointer helps and good luck with building your site.

# posted by

Sean McManus : 8:57 am

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