Among the dozens of Nintendo DS game stations at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo was one (yes, only 1!) station that featured an early version of the Nintendo DS Browser. While only offering the basic functions needed to instantly browse the web, it was more than enough to showcase what could be a must-have piece of software for the Nintendo DS. Read on for my hands-on preview.

Our reaction upon trying the DS Browser for the first time was “Hey! I wonder how 4cr looks like on this thing!” … Apparently everyone’s first reaction was about the same, and judging from the browser’s history log, people mostly visited IGN and Google.

One thing for sure is that the interface is easy to understand and feels like any PDA browser. Punch in a URL, press Enter, and browse around by clicking on the hyperlinks. It all seemed natural and easy.

The interface offers a very simple, yet intuitive approach to display everything you need on the relatively small DS screens. On the very top of the top screen, you see the familiar connection strength indicator, site URL, and a small DS logo that animates when the browser is loading a page (pretty much like any browsers).

The bottom screen on the other hand shows the scrollbar on the right side and the system bar at the very bottom. There are 13 standard buttons contained in that bar, each color coded to represent their specific tasks - Navigation, URL & Favorites, Configuration & Help, and Display Options. Most of these buttons are self-explanatory: Back, Forward, Refresh, History, URL Entry, Favorites and Find.

The Help menu offers a variety of useful tips to help you get familiar with this “unfamiliar” browser. The Configuration menu was present, but only offered basic options like clearing the history log, information about cookies, default prefixe and custom suffixes. Nothing to get excited about, but the Nintendo Rep confirmed me that there would be more advanced options in the final version.

The display options are where things gets interesting: The first button lets you switch between 1-screen and 2-screens display mode. The 2-screen mode lets you view page content on both screens and you can either scroll vertically or use the stylus while holding one of the shoulder buttons to scroll pages left and right. This display mode is really not recommended for heavily structured sites like IGN, Amazon, and forums. They will look like a meatpie crammed into a salt & pepper shaker. …Or something similar.

The 1-screen mode displays the whole site on the bottom screen and a zoomed view on the top screen. Moving your stylus on the bottom screen will let you view a “boxed area” on the top screen. This mode is recommended for any site, as it will display a page just like your current browser does. Flash and Java applets are not supported by the browser, so you’ll get a blank area where those are supposed to be. I’m not sure if the browser can handle pages with frames or iframes, but my guess is that it won’t and you’ll get the infamous “Your browser does not seem to support frames or frame support has been disabled” error message.

The last 3 icons are used to turn image display ON or OFF, set a zoom % for the 1-screen mode, and although I forgot exactly what the last one is used for, it has something to do with the page scrolling.

Let’s talk about that URL Entry menu now. The text field at the top shows your “typed URL” with custom suffixes displayed just underneath. By default, you are welcomed with the mini keyboard, which contains layouts for standard letters, accentuated letters and symbols.

Switching to the stylus entry mode will give you two boxes where you can write in letters or number/symbols (you have to choose between the two modes). You alternate between one box and the other to enter your URL. Two entry boxes makes it sound like it’s faster that way, but from what I’ve tried, it takes forever to completely enter your URL compared to the keyboard mode.

After entering your URL, the browser starts to load the content of the page, then applies the style when it’s done. I’m not sure if the connection was slow at the Convention Center, but the process took a long time to complete and you can’t really start browsing around while the browser is processing the page. That’s one more thing they could work on before releasing the final product.

I haven’t played much with the face buttons of the DS while using the browser, but you can navigate between the hyperlinks with the D-pad, and pressing the A-button translates as “OK” to follow a link. The other buttons might also have a use, but most actions can be performed with the stylus anyway.

Lastly, let’s take a look at the few mysteries that remains unanswered. First, the role of the memory expansion GBA cart is still unclear. Sure, it’ll be used as the browser’s cache, but seeing how the Rep vaguely answered and/or dodged my questions, there is without a doubt a nice little secret remaining about that cart.

Then, there’s this screenshot above that says “Press A to take screenshot”… I have no clue what to think about this one. Could there be a way to store screenshots of webpages on that GBA cart? If so, will that cart be able to store anything like downloadable mini-games and such? The mystery deepens!

If you wish to learn more details and specifications about the Nintendo DS Browser, join the Opera for Nintendo DS Community Forums.

(Click on the header image to see a full resolution picture of the browser’s interface)