If you read the post last week on how Web 2.0 friendly the Wii’s browser is, you’ll have seen that the only area it struggles is with sites using the Flash 8 plug-in. The main problems were with videos on MySpace and Bebo.

Anyway, one of Opera’s senior technical service consultants has addressed the issue of why the Wii browser’s Flash plug-in wasn’t updated to version 8.

“The answer is simple: there is no way to do so,” they write. “It is out of both Opera and Nintendo’s hands. The latest version of the Flash SDK (Software Development Kit) offered by Adobe is version 7, so that’s what anyone who is not a Windows, Linux or Mac PC have to settle with.”

They continue: “To support Flash on a phone or device, you have to license the Flash SDK from Adobe, and as long as they do not provide a more recent version, there is nothing you can do. If Adobe had offered a more recent version, no one would have been more thrilled than us. It would have made more sites work, and that would lead to less frustration to our users.”

So there you have it. What happens if and when Adobe does make Flash 8 available in its SDK though? Hopefully Opera and Nintendo will refresh the Wii browser to include it, despite claims that the current version is final. Fingers crossed.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 at 5:37 pm by Stuart Dredge
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