Re: WebTV

Sue,

In addition to what others have posted, here is what I've learned about
WebTV:

It's maximum safe rendering width is 550px wide. It will wrap graphics
beyond this limit, or resize them to smaller versions to fit. It seems to
display only 256 colors, thus ruining nice gradients or textures. It uses a
sans-serif font as a default (it knows only two font-types: sans-serif and
serif; it doesn't have the capability to display TrueType fonts, and can't
determine what "Arial" or "Times" is). It supports some CSS, but very little
that effect text rendering (it knows <CENTER> but not <DIV ALIGN="CENTER">,
at least not reliably). It doesn't understand percentages. It doesn't seem
to be able to turn off the edge borders/margins (probably good, since TVs
have such wide variances in actual display abilities). It seems to be built
on the MSIE 2 browser, and thus works best with HTML 3-coded pages (NO CSS).
It can't "lock" a background in place. It displays BOTH <FRAME> and
<NOFRAME> content on the same page, and frames scroll (THE WHOLE FRAMESET,
not just individual frames). It doesn't seem to understand most basic
JavaScript. And last but not least, it displays an ugly yellowish box around
the first link it finds on a page, which can cover surrounding text or
graphics depending on the layout.

While I still try to ensure my sites function on WebTV, the data I've read
lately implies it may be dying a slow death, which, IMHO is good.
Unfortunately, with AOLTV just now being prepped for nationwide launch
(currently in limited release), stupid TV-based browsing systems may yet
plauge us all, which is patently insane, considering good, websurfing-only
computers (with better resolutions) cost just a tiny bit more than WebTV
boxes.

But that's my 2c worth...

Kehvan

NOTE: The code samples listed above are capitalized to set them apart. I do
not code in capitals by default any more.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sue Bailey" <sue(at)bartandsue.co.uk>
To: <hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 20, 2000 5:32 PM
Subject: WebTV


> Oh dear. I just viewed my lovely new page (designed to be viewable in
> everything) in a WebTV browser-emulator. ARGH! Can anyone suggest any
> resource for design tips or something for this?
>
> My two particular problems are:
>
> 1) I designed the site in 800x600, as that is what the majority (60% or
so)
> are using; it also looks fine at higher res, and as acceptable as 640x480
> ever does to me these days. The emulator is showing an almost square
browser
> window; is this for real?
>
> 2) What's the state of the javascript support? I've only tested a part of
> the site, but the most basic things (e.g. make sure that something rather
> than nothing is selected from a select/option list) don't seem to work.
>
> Any pointers very gratefully received! (Currently I'm only getting 1% of
> hits from the pre-re-designed site as WebTV, but I'm expecting this to
> increase; right?)
>
> Sue
>
>

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