Browsing the internet with the Wii browser

The beta version of the Opera Wii browser is coming online tomorrow, but since it’s already the 22nd in Japan I was able to test it out a couple of hours early. Using the Wii remote to surf the net is simple. You click by pressing the A button and if you want to scroll you have to hold the B button on the backside of the remote. The plus and minus buttons are used to zoom into text and the “1” button quickly brings up the favorites menu. You can surf most websites like Google, Yahoo, Siliconera and Slashdot without any problems except tiny text. You have to get used to browsing around and then zooming into text when you want to read something. Sites like MySpace and Facebook won’t pose problems as long as you don’t mind typing messages with the virtual keyboard. Flickr works, Google maps works, and YouTube works. However, some web 2.0 sites like digg have problems. As you can see in the video digg crashes twice and brings the browser back to the home page. Parts of Apple’s site have problems too and internet radio stations like Shoutcast won’t work either. Remember this is a beta so the internet channel is far from perfect, but you can watch YouTube over it, which already gives the internet channel a huge thumbs up from me.