The glowing blue light that greeted me this morning informed me that a present was waiting for me on my Wii: the trial release of the browser for Wii has been released! And of course, Critical Hits was the first page I loaded. I’m happy to report that the page works perfectly with the Wii Browser!

The interface is about what I expected. Typing in websites, like typing anything else in on the Wii, takes a while. But loading is quick, and I didn’t encounter any CSS weirdness. And, like all the other on-screen buttons, putting the cursor over a link gives a noise out of the remote and it vibrates slightly. A nice tactile touch to webbrowsing.

And a big plus… embedded YouTubes work! Though there are certainly other ways to do it, watching YouTube on a tv is pretty cool. When I went to YouTube’s site, however, it didn’t like the browser. I have the feeling that won’t last. And for the meantime, you can watch all of our previous YouTube Tuesdays on the Wii Browser.

When I get home I intend to check out the games on the WiiCade and see if the Flash support is there like they say. It would be very cool to see homebrew stuff like that work.

(And any of you that get Wiis for xmas, be sure to post your system code! Mine is 7098 3777 2548 0858)