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These guidelines provide information and advice on designing web sites to be better viewed on the Planetweb Dreamcast web browser. Versions through 2.1x are covered in this document.
Contents:
Design your page using HTML 3.2. If you use HTML 4 elements, make sure they degrade gracefully when those elements are not supported.
The following HTML 3.2 elements are not supported in the Dreamcast browser (they will be gracefully ignored and rendered without modification):
- SUP
- SUB
- BIG
- SMALL
- LI TYPE under OL (in version 1.1x this is also ignored under UL)
- AREA NOHREF
The following are some differences between the Dreamcast browser and some of the major browsers in the rendering of HTML elements:
- B and STRONG tags are not very distinguishable from normal text (as the normal text is fairly bold to begin with)
- In Delimited lists (DL) the first line of a DD will be indented but all subsequent lines will not.
- Items within a PRE tag will wrap if there is not enough space to render them horizontally
- Single item SELECT tags will require the user manually click a checkbox to lock their selection into place
In addition to HTML 3.2, some other elements are supported. The main ones are table BGCOLOR (table background image is not supported) and basic frames support. Non-breaking spaces are supported, but the NOBR tag is not.
The browser default font is sans-serif, and the browser also has support for a monospaced font when appropriate (i.e. PRE, CODE, etc.) The font size is by default larger than on a typical computer screen to make the pages more readable on a TV screen.
The browser supports cookies, but does not store them persistently. They will be cleared out between reboots of the Dreamcast. So although cookies are effective on the Dreamcast for temporary user tracking such as shopping carts, they are not effective for long term tracking or for automatic login type systems.
Basic frames support is available in the Dreamcast browser, but control over borders, scrolling, and margins is not available, nor is IFRAME. Frame use should be kept to a minimum as users in general find frames difficult to navigate.
There is no concept of multiple windows in the Dreamcast browser, so if you try to create a new window it will just replace the current content on the screen. As a result, pages should not be designed to require the functionality of multiple separate windows to be compatible with the Dreamcast browser.
The browser supports GIF (including animated) and JPEG images. Versions 1.2x and up support PNG as well. Colors tend to be represented differently on a TV, and you should be careful when using background images or colors to not choose colors too close to that of the text on the page because the result might be unreadable on the TV, even if it isn't on your computer. Also avoid using background image patterns that are extremely small (such as 1x2 pixels) because it can noticably slow the browser when rendering the image an overly large amount of times. Try increasing small backgrounds to at least 16 pixels to make the page load faster.
The 1.x browser supports WAV, AU and AIFF audio files and 2.0x also supports MP3. Other formats not mentioned (such as MIDI) are not supported. There is no support for Real Audio or other streaming media in the browser.
There is no support for movies of any type (other than animated gifs) in the browser currently except for support of Sega's .sfd format in 2.0x. There is support for viewing of VMU animations which are included on the web page via Sega's plugin format.
The Dreamcast browser supports VMU animations which are included on the page using Sega's plugin format. In addition, version 2.0x of the browser supports VMU file upload and force feedback.
In the 2.0x browser, 128 bit SSL is supported. In earlier versions export strength SSL is supported, but not 128 bit (due to a change in the export restrictions).
All style sheet settings will be ignored by the browser, so don't design the page to be dependent on it to be readable or functional.
The Dreamcast browser supports Javascript 1.1, but not later versions. It also does not support multiple windows, so Javascripts which deal with multiple windows will not work as expected. Java is not supported in any of the current versions of the browser, but is being worked on for a future release. Version 2.0x of the browser supports Flash 3, but previous versions of the browser do not contain any support for Flash or other plugins. Avoid requiring the use of Javascript versions above 1.1, Java or plugins for any critical content. If you use them, take advantage of the functionality available in HTML to make the page gracefully degrade and allow access to the content.
The Dreamcast browser does support standard mailto links (they will be sent to the mail client). It does not support sending a subject along with a mailto as part of the link - that will likely result in a bounced message unless the user notices the invalid address and corrects it. It also does not support mailto forms- if a user tries to submit a mailto form, it will be treated as a normal mailto link and none of the form contents will be sent.
The Dreamcast browser does not support FTP, so links of this type will not work. Content that needs to be accessed by the browser should be made available via HTTP.
The dimensions of the Planetweb browser screen are approximately 608 pixels wide by 392 pixels high. Pages wider or longer will need to be scrolled to view, so pages should not be designed to require wider screens if at all possible (it is better to design a page which is flexible enough to adapt to varying screen sizes or make it less wide to be on the safe side). It's also recommended that pages not be made too long as users generally dislike excessive scrolling and may not read far past the beginning of the document.
The following are some general recommendations on how to make your page more readable and usable in the Dreamcast browser:
- For readability, it is recommended that graphics containing text be kept to a minimum and that text not be made overly small. Remember that a web user viewing a page on a TV will be sitting much further back from the screen than a computer user.
- Exact pixel spacing designs should be avoided unless they have been explicitly tested on the Dreamcast as it is sometimes difficult to get them to line up exactly as they do on a computer screen, and they often line up differently on different computer platforms as well.
The browser can be detected by looking for "Dreamcast" in the browser user agent. An example user agent is: Mozilla/3.0 (compatible; Planetweb/1.125 JS SSL US Gold; Dreamcast US)
It is recommended that you validate your HTML (W3C's validator available at http://validator.w3.org/) to make sure there are no errors. Many errors will be transparently corrected by the browser before being displayed to the user, but since the handling of HTML errors is not standardized, you could experience different problems from browser to browser and perhaps not notice errors from browser testing that might affect users using other browsers unless you use an HTML checker. It is always a good idea to check your pages in the Dreamcast browser, but if you don't have one available, validating your HTML will help to decrease the likelihood of problems in your HTML that might interfere with the readability or functionality of your page.
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