How the PS3 internet browser sucks

It's nice having access to the wider internet via the PS3 rather than just those applications the manufacturer thinks we should have access to ([cough] Microsoft XBox360), but boy does the PS3's browser suck if you want to do anything beyond passive viewing of static screens.


I'll start with the basics - the PS3 browser by default starts with a home page that you can set and allows up to six tab/windows open at the same time. Not that different really from many mobile browsers; well not that different except for all the parts that don't work correctly.

The first irritation is that you cannot open the browser to anything other than a designated home screen - you can't select the browser icon and type in an address; you have to wait for the browser to open and then to fetch the home page and then type an address. Why this is such a problem will become apparent due to the other faults I'll come to.

Of course one can use the search function instead - provided that a) the only search engine you want to use is Google and b) if you've set the language to English (United Kingdom) you don't mind getting the Japanese search results (since the latest updates).

Javascript is a major problem (to the extent I normally switch it off). Load up a page such as a game wiki and then open a link to the same site in another tab. If that site uses javascript it is impossible to do anything in the original tab until the new tab has finished loading.

This combines with a problem of cancellation. In a "normal" browser if a page is taking too long to load one can hit the Stop/Cancel and get on with something else - not with the PS3 browser.

First off hitting cancel only cancels one of the tasks. If you load up something like iGoogle each of those widgets is its own task. Hit cancel and it'll stop loading the main iGoogle page, but will continue to honour the request made by the widgets. If the page has adverts loaded from an external site those are their own tasks too.

Secondly hitting cancel may still not allow you to do anything. It seems the cancel only kicks in once the server responds. Get a site that isn't responding and no amount of hitting cancel will actually cancel it.

Thirdly if you're cancelling a tab which is from the same site as another tab; that other tab may no longer work with respect to any javascript - because you've cancelled the loading of it.

As you can't do anything in that other tab until the other is loaded you might as well wait until it's finished, except you won't know when that's happened because the browser will only update the display for the currently selected tab.

It gets even better because the tabs won't cancel properly if you just close down that tab or even the entire browser the entire system can lock up because it's waiting for an acknowledgement that it either won't be getting or can't deal with since you've closed the browser.

You won't be able to even return to the XMB without powering down the entire system.

In fact you can manage that lock-up another way using the in-built keyboard screen. Use the search boxes a lot of sites provide and if it uses some form of javascript that the PS3 can't handle the system becomes unusable. You can't close the keyboard screen because it can't return a value to the browser, you can't access the XMB because having the keyboard screen open prevents it; and you can't close the browser because the keyboard screen is still open and uses the same button to close. Power down the entire system

In short the PS3's implementation of this browser is a huge pile of shit that had it been included on a mobile phone would result in a complete drubbing for the manufacturer. We're up to the fourth iteration of the OS and it's still crap - hell it won't even play YouTube videos in anything over 240p and then still has problems syncing audio and video.