PlayStation®3 General Discussion

[Tribble6]

If you like the idea of browsing the Internet with your PS3 (an "IT ONLY DOES EVERYTHING" bullet point), or you don't have a PC / Mac or iPad / Android tablet (or they're out of action), in this thread you will hopefully find all the latest news and tips on a potentially great PS3 feature. 

Overall, the new WebKit based browser, which Sony introduced with Firmware 4.10, is a significant improvement over the original NetFront browser as it displays most of today's web sites with much greater accuracy, even if performance is below par for a console of  the PS3's power. Hopefully, this is just the start and over the coming weeks Sony will address the various issues, such as the occasional hanging when clicking links and improve usage with the PS3 remote (a great feature), as this has gone backwards (less accurate).

I will of course post any new findings I have, but I hope this thread becomes a one stop shop for browser tips and news etc.

Usage Guide

• To reduce the height of the address and status bars to a single line on a HD (720p, 1080i and 1080p) TV, press the Triangle button and select Tools, Display Area, Full Pixel from the menu.
   
• Bookmark your favourite pages by pressing Select and then X or Enter to select the "[Add to Bookmarks]" option.
   
• To zoom into an area of the page, optionally move the cursor to the desired area and press R3. Then if necessary adjust the zoom with R2 (zoom in) and L2 (zoom out). To exit zoom, press R3 or Circle.
   
• To open a link in a new window, hold down the X or Enter button on the link (saves having to re-load the original page, where you are likely to click another link (e.g. news article) on the original page). To close the new window and therefore return to the original window, press L3, Triangle and select Close Window from the menu. To move between opened windows, use the L2 and R2 buttons (exit zoom if necessary) or press L3 and cursor to the desired window and press X or Enter.
   
• To save a picture to the hard disk or other storage, position the cursor on the image, press the Triangle button and select File, Save Image from the menu.
   
• To save a video or music file, presently you may be able to just click the associated link, however, Sony will hopefully re-instate the ability to stream certain video and music files, in which case, you will need to position the cursor on the link, press Triangle and select File, Save Target from the menu.
   
• To copy a block of text to the clipboard using the PS3 controller move the cursor to start or end of the text and hold down the X button and move the cursor to highlight the desired text, release the X button and select Copy from the popup menu. If the text includes a link, ensure you initially position the cursor beyond the link, otherwise you'll end up clicking the link. Once you've copied the text, you can then paste the text by displaying the text entry dialog (for a text box etc) and clicking the button in the bottom right corner of the dialog. To copy the address of a link, position the cursor on the link and press Triangle and select File, Copy Address of This Link from the menu. 
   
• The fastest way to enter text with the on-screen text entry dialog (with a bit of practise) is to switch to the phone style layout (click the keypad type button at the bottom of the dialog) . To delete all the text in a text box, press the Square and L1 buttons together. To enter several digits in a number, press Select twice, to display a numeric keypad (this keypad could do with a dot '.' key, for entering decimal values). 
   
• If some web sites are causing the browser to repeatedly hang (cursor stops moving) and you end up having to press the power button on the front of the console to power down the console (don't turn it off at the mains), try turning off JavaScript by pressing Triangle and selecting Tools, JavaScript, Off from the menu and re-visiting the sites. This indicates there is an issue with JavaScript, however you can also cause the browser to hang by simply clicking a link (see Browser issues below).

Key Web Sites

• Google Search - UK, US. Essentially looks and operates fine.
  
  If Sony revert to the standard way web page elements (text box, button, link etc) receive focus, you could most likely use the "query prediction" feature (on closing PS3's text entry dialog). 
  
  
• Official PlayStation Forum (EU)  - PS3 General Discussion. Well, "blow me down with a feather", the presentation of the forum is now spot on and we can post and edit messages.
  
  HOWEVER, you'll want to avoid adding emoticons as these DELETE THE MESSAGE YOU"VE JUST SPENT HALF AN HOUR ENTERING (not me personally, but this could result in some seriously peeved PS3 users). Also, spellcheck isn't working. 
   
• Official PlayStation Forum (US) - PS3 General Discussion. Presentation is also spot on, if rather slow.
  
  As with EU site, adding emoticons DELETES YOUR NEW MESSAGE (avoid). Also you get an error message when posting a message, even though the message is actually posted o.k.
  
  
• Hotmail (Windows Live Mail). On entering a correct id / password the site ends up in a continuous loop, which eventually results in an error page. Turning off JavaScript is not an option as the site requires it.
  
  The mobile site, mobile.live.com/hm still works fine.
   
• YouTube. Apart from one glaring omission, YouTube is transformed by the new browser and looks and operates just as well as your favourite desktop browser (performance aside). You can even reply to an individual video comment! The glaring omission? Video playback is still porridge (240p - half DVD resolution) - I know this probably isn't the browser's fault, but even so!
  
  At some point you may end up on the very basic YouTube XL site, instead of the standard YouTube site. To get back to the standard site, click the yellow "View Standard Version" link, in the bottom left corner of the page. 
  
  The YouTube Charts page highlights one issue with the browser; it has trouble handling large numbers of images and displays the missing image icon for some of the images.
  
  If the poor video quality is a deal breaker for you (you've got a monster TV), there's the 3rd party and PS3 specific PS3YouTube.com and if you want to use them in combination, you might want to try PS3 Bookmarklet (my contribution to the cause - refresh issue no longer an issue - yay!). 
   
• Wikipedia. This is much improved and the slightly larger font means, in the zoomed state (press R3 and hold down L2 to un-zoom, as far as possible), you can read the articles from your sofa without having to horizontally scroll page..
  
  You may find the site defaults unnecessarily to the mobile version (perhaps Sony could ask Wikipedia to change this). To prevent this, click the "Permanently disable mobile site" link at the bottom of the Wikipedia page.
   
• Facebook. I don't use Facebook - anyone else given this a good try in the PS3 browser?

Browser Issues in Firmware 4.11

• Sometimes when you click a link the browser "locks up" and you can't move the cursor for several minutes (it will normally recover). During this time you can switch to a another (open) window (R2 / L2) and change the settings in the browser menu (press Triangle etc), but zoom doesn't work (R3 etc). If you exit the browser during the lockup, it will remain locked until the few minutes are up.
  
  I even had this occur in the following scenario: exited NetFlix app, loaded browser with Google.com as my Home page, changed to Netflix.com, which displayed "Trial offer" page and finally cursored to and clicked "Member Log In" link (using PS3 remote) - locked. Waited for it to recover and it didn't do it again (logged out and tried clicking link again)... I've also had this on the BBC News web site and today on the US PS3 Forum, i.e. not specific to a web site etc.
  
  I'm speculating this might occur where you click a link while the browser is still updating the page (for "hover" styles).
   
• On clicking an Adobe Flash object (video player, game etc), the object no longer receives control of the D-Pad keys, which breaks any object that requires cursor key input, such as some Flash games and the video player for YouTube XL (can no longer use the cursor keys to navigate the video player controls (Rewind, Full screen etc)).
   
• The "focus" model used by the new browser is a retrograde step. Previously, with the NetFront browser and desktop browsers, all HTML input elements (text box, drop down list, etc), buttons and links could be programmatically given focus by calling their associated "focus" method. In NetFront this would move the cursor to the text box etc, so it could be clicked.
  
  Currently, when the "focus" method is called for text boxes (doesn't even work for links or properly for other elements) the browser automatically displays the text entry dialog, which is not always desirable as quite often you want to see the form etc, before you start entering text. Sony probably asked Google to stop setting focus to the text box on the Google home page for this very reason, where as before the cursor would desirably moved to the text box, ready to be clicked. This is especially important for data entry forms where a text box may not be the first input field (may be a radio button etc).
  
  My strong recommendation here is to revert to original model where you can programmatically set focus to all appropriate elements (text box, radio button, link, button etc) and this just moves the cursor to the element (doesn't open text entry dialog etc).
   
• Support for the "target" link attribute is only half implemented. Where you click a link where the web site has indicated the content should be loaded in a named separate window (as specified by the attribute), the browser currently opens a new window for the first link clicked, however, for the second link it opens an additional window instead of loading the content in the first new window (as with desktop browsers and the original NetFront browser).
   
• When entering a password the text cursor is shown in the wrong position (before the last character entered). This doesn't effect password entry but it is a little disconcerting.
   
• The cursor navigation routine appears to have been written from scratch without paying attention to the original programming logic (for NetFront), which wasn't bad. Presently, it's significantly less accurate (doesn't always jump to the intended element). For example, on the YouTube my_subscriptions page (must be logged in to use this), you have great trouble getting from the thumbnail check boxes to the thumbnail image links (jumps to the next checkbox, I fix this in the bookarklet). This is possibly related to the unnecessary "float: left" style YouTube uses for the grid entries. Also, doesn't work properly for the menu used on the YouTube Charts page. 
  
  To allow for popup menus and prompts etc, I would recommend that the routine ignores elements (links, buttons etc)  under popup elements (e.g. a DIV on a different level (zIndex)), where the popup element contains clickable elements (links, input elements etc). Presently nothing is ignored (NetFront ignored links below popup). If the popup element just contains information (text), such as a tooltip or YouTube's HoverCard's (show movie / show information), it should be ignored, so for example, you can cursor to the element (video thumbnail etc) under the popup.
  
  If this is perfected, this could be one of the best ways (simple to use and a D-Pad costs peanuts to manufacture) to navigate a web site on a TV (compared to using a touch pad etc). For perfection it needs to be fast and it should recognize elements that aren't normally clickage, such as a SPAN or link without an address, but have been assigned a "click" handler (NetFront didn't support this).

[JOHNY--BRAVO]

good effort, you obviously put some time into this thread, im giving up on the ps3 browser more and more each day, maybe sony will fix it by the time the ps4 is released but i very much doubt it, i dont know why they even bother putting such an inferior browser on their systems and have read the vita browser isnt much better which i find hard to believe after years and years of ps3 browser complaints they would make the same mistakes again.

[gymno74]

my ps3  is the only internet connected hardware i own.

thanks for making this thread.

i just hope it doesn't get spoilt with rants & therefore becomes a long-term sticky

[mont348]

Great post Tribble6 the browser is a vast improvement and i think this version will be improved on i believe in jeff-rigby's posts on NeoGaf. 

As for the smilies drop box on the forum it is a bit of annoyance but if you know the emotions html use the add/edit term feature in system settings and save the smilies in the predictive text memory.

[Strangesam]

Good thread mate.

Some of the problems I had in the browser before some of the latest updates were a lot worse, glad they fixed at least a few of them.

[Certinfy]

Great thread.

[joshsnooker1994]

there is already a thread like this

[Tribble6]

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mont348 wrote:

Great post Tribble6 the browser is a vast improvement and i think this version will be improved on i believe in jeff-rigby's posts on NeoGaf. 

As for the smilies drop box on the forum it is a bit of annoyance but if you know the emotions html use the add/edit term feature in system settings and save the smilies in the predictive text memory.

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Great to see the positive response.

On the emoticon PS3 forum issue, something similar happened to me in the past, where I'd spent ages typing a long message on the PS3, only for it to be zapped for some reason - seriously "gutted"! This really should be less of an issue with the new browser, however, if you have spent some time entering a message on a forum etc, as a general tip I would recommend copying it to the clipboard, before using extra features and obviously before submitting message - "just in case" (e.g. to allow for where forum session has expired). I actually do this on a PC too. 

To copy all text to the clipboard, while text entry dialog is displayed, click the button to the left of the button in the bottom right corner of text entry dialog, press X and highlight all text (move cursor to top) and press X again.

As this issue is likely to catch out and put off new PS3 browser users, I would disable the emoticon feature in the PS3 browser, assuming there isn't a quick fix (given that you can add several icons in one go, a fix looks highly possible).

If the feature is temporarily disabled, you can manually add a "smiley" emoticon on the EU (UK etc) forum by entering a colon followed by smiley and one of the following words and another colon:

happy , indifferent :, mad :, sad , surprised , wink , embarrassed 

For the following icons enter the word listed surrounded by colons: Thumbs , Frown , xRolleyes  

On the US forum, this isn't an option as the editor uses actual icons in the editor and also the clipboard can't see these icons.

[joshsnooker1994]

u could of just posted thisin a thread that already existed

[mont348]

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joshsnooker1994 wrote:
u could of just posted thisin a thread that already existed

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Your thread turned into a complete spam fest please don't de-rail this one.