Who Wants Web TV?
by Heather Champ
If you ask a random sampling of Web designers whether or not they take into consideration the effects of the WebTV browser on their site development strategies, more often then not you will be greeted with a minimal shoulder shrug.This would likely be a very different story if consumer sales had reached anywhere near the 10 million sets by the end of this year projected last year by WebTV. But given that sales as of April 1st have reached 56,0000, there is still minimal concern within the design community. The subsequent $425 million cash and stock purchase by Microsoft will definitely change the landscape in the future.
What is it the sites desire most? "Eyeballs," and given the reported two hundred million televisions viewers who are just waiting to get online, it's a rather heady prospect. The television viewing public has had the opportunity to create a consumer feeding frenzy not seen since the likes of the Cabbage Patch Kids frenzy or the recent Beanie Baby broo-ha, but they've yet to bite.
While the most fretting used to occur over ensuring a reasonable user experience for the hoards of AOL users, in reading the specifications for Web TV it is safe to say that given some of the rigid size issues enforced by the browers, the lowest common denominator just got lower.
Size does matter
Unlike any other graphical browser, Web TV does not have a horizontal scroll. There is a "page down" feature that shifts the page, but something more interesting happens with documents that are wider than the WebTV safe real estate. With other browsers, images and text may rearrange themselves, especially if tables without specified widths are used. The Web TV browser will "squish" or scale images and columns to fit into the safe area. In the end this redrawing of the document can lead to a completely different spatial arrangement of elements that may not present a site in the best light, or be comprehensible, to the WebTV user. It brings back issues of real estate, where there was much more of an issue with width 467 or 600 pixels. It's much more of an issue with WebTV as users are unable to resize their browser windows.Online Resources and Tip Sheets
Many of the tips listed at the site would lead a designer to develop sites more like television but without the movement. It's rather frustrating to see that the general tone is to make it big and simple. And given one of the tag lines from the splash screen "Internet for the rest of us," there seems to be a notion that while Web TV users may have a different platform they might also have even less patience than the typical Web surfer.
- Both the WebTV Style Guide and the WebTV HTML Reference Guide are available for download in Acrobat PDF format. Both guides are the most comprehensive resources available online for all of the various tags, information, and tips for creating a site that fits the WebTV spec.
- If you thought that working within the limitations of "Internet safe" colors was tough, be prepared for the 163 cross-platform colors in the Mac/Windows/NTSC Palette. Peter Duke of Duke Media has created a wonderful Shareware (he would like users to send $5 if the document is used on a regular basis) HTML document that illustrates the compatible colors.
In the end is it really worth it to either "WebTV-atize" your site or create a site specifically for the WebTV? At the present time, not really. But it's important to be aware of what obstacles face the user in viewing a site.
