Web TV

[dreuby]

I just noticed in my stats browser type reports that 7% of my visitors are using web TV. How can I check that my site is OK for these users, apart from signing up for web TV ?

What do you all do?

[Hierophant]

WebTV has a whole site dedicated to making your sites work in their browsers. They have even developed a WebTV emulator that you can use on your computer. To get this and other tools go to: http://developer.webtv.net

This is your single best resource for developing WebTV compliant sites and applications.

[hmahonen]

You can find WebTV viewer for PC at:
http://developer.webtv.net/design/to...er/Default.htm

I also recommend to take a look to http://developer.webtv.net/design/checklist/Default.htm for basic considerations how to develop WebTV compatible web pages.

Edit:

This is the same site as the one mr. Luke gave you, but these are direct url's Half of a minute too late.

[dreuby]

Thanks for the info!

[dreuby]

Now I've tried the program - what a strange sensation! But it's really great - very useful, and if only TV remotes could be as easy to find in real life!

Now all I've got to do is re-design my site so that it's OK for WebTV, by which time WAP will be ready to pounce ...

[jumpthru]

Maybe redesign it and say click here if you are on a webtv. But dont just redesign the whole site for webtv. It will look horrible on a computer! You should take the majority in mind.

[Dak]

Thanks for the link hmahonen, it will be real useful. I'm downloading it now.

[dreuby]

It even covers PAL (which I think we use over here in Europe & UK - any TV engineers please correct me!) and the US/Japanese format. Their design suggestions pages are useful too.

[etLux]

For many site developers, no amount of redesign will make a web page friendly to WebTV. In such cases, it's probably smartest and easiest to just dodge the issue -- by making up special pages that *are* suitable for WebTV, and redirecting to them.

JavaScript can easily pick up WebTV visitors; and a simple "sniffer" with redirection might look something like this...

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
if(navigator.appName.indexOf("WebTV") != -1){
window.location = "WebTvPage.html";
}
</SCRIPT>

... which would see incoming WebTV visitors, and immediately send them to WebTvPage.html.