We recently received an enquiry from a client asking if their e-commerce store built on the Ballyhoo Commerce software would operate on the Playstation 3 browser. A little research gave very little insight into the specification of the browser distributed with the PS3 so we ran some tests of our own. We thought we’d share our findings as they may help others.
Internet Explorer 6 Behaviours
Firstly we noticed that the browser was not managing fixed positioning in CSS, a trait that is famously associated with Internet Explorer 6. We set up a test page which uses conditional statements
If you visit our test page on the PS3 browser, you will find it responds to the conditional statement for Internet Explorer 6. So, if you are keen for your site to render correctly on the PS3 you must work around all the peculiarities associated with Internet Explorer 6.
Javascript Support
There is a certain level of support for Javascript in the PS3 browser. Our e-commerce software uses AJAX requests in several areas and this functions perfectly on the PS3 as well as various simple scripts. However, we also used the Scriptaculous Javascript Library to provide some animation effects and drag-and-drop functionality in places. This does not work and at times has caused the PS3 to lock up completely. For now we have simply allowed our clients to disable this advanced functionality if they wish to support PS3 users.
