Wii Browser Text Input method confirmed

Samster

Slave to the Wind
Nov 6, 2006
145
0
London, England
Hi All - new here - have a Wii on preorder in the UK for 8th December.

One of the things I've been eager to find out was how you input text into Wii's Opera browser. Confirmation of Opera is great news as it's the best browser for use on TV's. 'Opera 9 for devices' is great on set-top boxes etc, so I'm expecting it to be more than useable on the Wii.

So how will you input text? Well today I read that Zi Corporation have signed an exclusive licensing agreement with Nintendo to embed it's predictive text system called eZiText into the Wii. Hmmmmmmmm predictive text - fine for SMS on a phone or instant messaging, but inputting a URL? I'm not convinced.

I was hoping that the Wii browser would feature something truly revolutionary, something that took full advantage of the Wii-mote. Has anybody heard of the Dasher project? Dasher is a way of inputting text using just tiny movements - no keyboard, no voice recognition - just 'driving' through a zooming field and 'steering' over the letters you want as fast or slow as you wish. Would be perfect for Wii. If you are interested you can download Dasher for Windows here - it's only a 1MB file: http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/download/win_nt/4.2/Dasher 4.2.1.exe

Give it a go - don't expect to get good until you've practiced for at least 15 minutes! It can be customised greatly. I wrote all my emails at work today using it - I had a weird kind of motion sickness by the end of the day which was pretty cool! The Dasher Project website is here: Inference Group: Dasher Project: Home

I believe that this is what the Wii needs / should have had!

Catch you all around................Sam
 
Typically website use will be limited. Especially when most people will be connected WiFi, meaning they have computers nearby anyways.
 
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