Homebrew Better Wii Web Browser Experience

[giantpune]

the internet channel executable and the browser code (wwwlib) are both lz77 compressed. youre going to have a bit of trouble trying to just search for strings and edit them without first decompressing the thing.

 

[SifJar]

When you send a request to a server in html, you send a header which contains info such as the encoding, the language, the user agent etc...
With some linux tool like wget, the user-agent can be useful to access restrictive sites or forums using google bot for example. In firefox, there's some extensions (user agent switcher) to achieve this too.

Here, on Wii, as others said the most difficult is not to change the string but to modify the wad, well it should be possible...
But, what's the purpose of this ? Watch youtube video ? That won't change the fact there's no java or latest flash in opera wii and most android apps are coded in java. Well, personnally I don't think it's really worth it except maybe a better display for some websites.

This has nothing to do with Android apps, and nor does it have to do with Java. The idea is to get the versions of websites formatted for Android phones, which are often simpler to navigate etc. One problem I do see is lack of HTML5 support, which many mobile sites rely on.

@SifJar
Could you pack a NTSC-U .wad with the include line off, please?
I wanna test something. (Running a .dol/.elf from the SD with the browser)

No. It would be illegal for me to distribute that WAD considering it is copyrighted Nintendo code. Do it yourself if you want to test. It's not that hard. Unpack WAD, extract 0000002C.app with U8 extraction tool, edit filter.ini, repack 0000002C.app with a U8 packing utility, repack WAD. But I can tell you now with a reasonable amount of certainty that it will not work. Why on earth would they have programmed in a DOL or ELF loader into an Internet Browser? And if they had, it'd work with remote DOLs or ELFs (e.g. hosting one online and typing in the URL). Simply being able to load files from SD won't magically make it able to load more formats.

 

[OriginalHamster]

One thing I've always wondered is, how in the hell the cookie storing system works, no matter if I visit a few pages, Opera Wii always delete the cookies after a few days. Even when I keep my favorites low, the cookies dissapear.

 

[Wiimpathy]

This has nothing to do with Android apps, and nor does it have to do with Java. The idea is to get the versions of websites formatted for Android phones, which are often simpler to navigate etc. One problem I do see is lack of HTML5 support, which many mobile sites rely on.

Yeah, I understand the goal is to have big buttons for youtube and his million of interesting videos, or viewing the personal data robber aka facebook/google in optimized conditions. I was just extrapolating the android part. Changing the user agent won't add anything really new (just my opinon). Updating flash or making a java emulator is another story for sure.
You're right about html5 support, could be a problem.
Anyway, good luck with the work on wad and finding a "legal" way to distribute it.

 

[JoostinOnline]

This has nothing to do with Android apps, and nor does it have to do with Java. The idea is to get the versions of websites formatted for Android phones, which are often simpler to navigate etc. One problem I do see is lack of HTML5 support, which many mobile sites rely on.

Yeah, I understand the goal is to have big buttons for youtube and his million of interesting videos, or viewing the personal data robber aka facebook/google in optimized conditions. I was just extrapolating the android part. Changing the user agent won't add anything really new (just my opinon). Updating flash or making a java emulator is another story for sure.
You're right about html5 support, could be a problem.
Anyway, good luck with the work on wad and finding a "legal" way to distribute it.

Couldn't you distribute some sort of patch, then have people apply it to the wad (or perhaps its contents)?

 

[SifJar]

This has nothing to do with Android apps, and nor does it have to do with Java. The idea is to get the versions of websites formatted for Android phones, which are often simpler to navigate etc. One problem I do see is lack of HTML5 support, which many mobile sites rely on.

Yeah, I understand the goal is to have big buttons for youtube and his million of interesting videos, or viewing the personal data robber aka facebook/google in optimized conditions. I was just extrapolating the android part. Changing the user agent won't add anything really new (just my opinon). Updating flash or making a java emulator is another story for sure.
You're right about html5 support, could be a problem.
Anyway, good luck with the work on wad and finding a "legal" way to distribute it.

Couldn't you distribute some sort of patch, then have people apply it to the wad (or perhaps its contents)?

Didn't I post (twice) exactly how to do what I was talking about?

 

[Wiimpathy]

A patch would be possible once you've found the string compressed or not. Not interested in that, but I'm sure there's some people out there able to do it (giantpune or maybe you joostin !).
I won't interfere anymore here, was just trying to express opinion and share some general basic "html" knowledge.

 

[Coto]

the js compiler included in opera wii IS ppc (which I'm not sure if opera wii IS 8 or 9) Most android apps relying on jquery *should work fine*, at least some small proyects i've tested on opera wii seem to like Jquery'ed html code as long as you include a relatively small jsquery package (older).

Accordingly to this site there's a flashplayer 10 for PPC, which should lag horribly on wii if run from ie:linux wii, but what about Wii Opera Channel? Could it be recompiled? I really don't know...

 

[XICO2KX]

There were at least 3 homebrew web browsers being developed for the Wii:

• WiiBrowse
• WiiXplore
• WorldWiideWeb

Unfortunately they are all unfinished and none of them plays Flash movies that require Flash 9 or above...
Too bad no one created Chrome or Firefox ports for the Wii!

 

[Foxi4]

There were at least 3 homebrew web browsers being developed for the Wii:

• WiiBrowse
• WiiXplore
• WorldWiideWeb

Unfortunately they are all unfinished and none of them plays Flash movies that require Flash 9 or above...

Too bad no one created Chrome or Firefox ports for the Wii!

Nobody ported them because you really don't have to.

If you want to improve your browsing experience, start with this:



And remember, buy a USB keyboard!

 

[FullMetalEngineer]

Nobody ported them because you really don't have to.

If you want to improve your browsing experience, start with this:



And remember, buy a USB keyboard!

yeah and no memory left to do anything functional on the web with linux eating up half of it.

 

[Foxi4]

yeah and no memory left to do anything functional on the web with linux eating up half of it.

You wanted Firefox or Chrome on the Wii - there you go then.

There are numerous light-weigh Linux distributions that you could try, really - they don't necessarily need to "eat up half of the memory".

 

[XICO2KX]

Also, there seems to be another Internet browser project for the Wii that's still alive, as reported here: WiiBrowse*r*

 

[Psionic Roshambo]

As a long time user of Opera on the desktop I can confirm that changing the ID of the browser can dramatically improve your browsing.... Not sure why but some web pages do not like Opera, but low and behold change the ID on it to something like FireFox or IE and they load perfectly fine. Recently I have been favoring Chrome though, the last couple of versions of Opera have slowed down and been even buggier than normal.

Now if this is possible on the Wii and would it help on the Wii? I don't have a clue.

 

[nakata6790]

Nice tip! I also use Opera for 99.9% of my browsing needs and i could use that.

 

[XICO2KX]

(...) changing the ID of the browser (...)
Now if this is possible on the Wii and would it help on the Wii? I don't have a clue.

It would be awesome if someone with Wii hacking knowledge could to a memory patch for that!