ViewCall HTML Extensions

ViewCall On-TV is a system for using a TV set as a Web display device with a set-top box. In common with all other TV-HTML systems, page size and colour depth are limited by the TV format. HTML features vary between the systems, though.

ViewCall basically supports HTML3.2, with some exceptions. Currently there is no support for Java, JavaScript, ActiveX, plugins (EMBED), etc.

Early versions do not support frames; later ones may support a single frame within a frameset. The following tags were unsupported in a pre-release:

Frames
Strikeout, blink
USEMAP (client-side imagemap)
defined bullet styles
Non-numeric ordered lists
Multi-line form input boxes (select)
Form imagemap (images as submit buttons)
Font faces
multicolumn (<MULTICOL> tag)
Animated GIFs

Audio/basic is supported through the TV sound channel

Extensions

Several HTML extensions are provided to allow page designers to program the buttons. Be careful not to reprogram the Website button and leave the user no way to enter a URL without rebooting.

The remote control has four coloured buttons, a numeric keypad, a "Help" key, "Back" key, "Home" key and "Goto"key together with cursor keys, page up/down, delete and select keys. Users may purchase an optional ASCII keyboard which has these function keys as well as the regular typewriter keys.

<a href="home.html" rel=fastextred value="Home Page"></a>
Define coloured key as a hyperlink. Also green, yellow, blue.

<a href="home.html" rel="KEYn">link key N;</a>
Define numeric key as a link.

Define default target for coloured key. Within HEAD element.

<body statuscolor="red">
Define background colour for status area

<input type="reset" rel="fastextred" value="Defaults">
Assign a form function to a coloured key.

Demo Page