Wii+and+the+Flash+Player+(7)

=Wii, the internet, and the Flash Player (7)=

To make browsing the internet possible on the Wii, Nintendo teamed up with Opera, one of the smaller though well known browser developers, to create an internet browser for the Nintendo "Internet Channel". Owners of a Wii can, for the small cost of about US$5, purchase and download the browser to their Wii console.

Navigating the Nintendo (Opera) browser is a little tricky without a mouse and keyboard (though a USB keyboard can be purchased) but is possible using just the Wiimote. It is possible to view and interact with any page on the internet with one reasonably major drawback - the version of the Adobe Flash Player that is available. Currently the latest version available to regular PC and Mac users is version 10 though the version supported on the Wii is only version 7.

This means that a lot of video sites and more modern websites developed with later Flash Players in mind are unavailable to Wii internet users.

There are a number of internet "discussions" about why only Flash Player 7 is made available, though what it all really boils down to for this project is that Flash Player 7 is available, and it is not planned that the player be updated in the near future. Therefore a lot of later programming techniques are unavailable (discussed in other posts).

For those who are interested in some more details about what is happening with the Flash Player you may find the following blog entry interesting. It is from one of the developers of the Opera browser for the Wii: [].

So with this in mind I started looking into doing some spray painting trials...