Export Your Internet Explorer Favorites

Now that your favorites are organized, you need to export them to a special HTML file so you can put that information in the PSP.
In Internet Explorer, select the File menu, and then select Import and Export. The Import/Export Wizard appears. Click Next to start the wizard, and then click Export Favorites as the action to perform.
Click the folder containing your PSP favorites and click Next. Now choose a location to save the bookmarks file by clicking the Browse button under Export to a File or Address. I suggest saving it on your desktop or in your My Documents folder so it’s easy to find (you can throw it away when you’re done with all this). Name the file “bookmarks. html” (without the quotes, and all lowercase). Click Next when you’re done, then Finish, and Internet Explorer tells you it has successfully exported your favorites.

How to Organize Your Favorites?

You may have a lot of favorites already saved in Internet Explorer. You likely don’t want them all on your PSP. Use the Organize Favorites option under the Favorites menu to organize the bookmarks you want on your PSP into a folder. I created a folder named PSP Links and placed all my PSP favorites in there.
If you do not know how to use the Organize Favorites feature of Internet Explorer, go to Tools, then Help, and click Contents and Index. Click Search and type organize favorites and click List Topics. Finally, click the topic Organize Your Favorite Pages into Folders.

Downloading Files with Sony’s Web Browser

Sony’s Web browser can also download music, video, and image files directly onto the Memory Stick inserted into your PSP for viewing in its various media viewing applications. It can also download any other type of file, which you can access via USB mode on your PSP or by placing your Memory Stick into a media card reader after it’s been downloaded. To download a file, simply find the link to the file you want to download and highlight it. Then go to the Web browser menu by pressing Triangle, and then select the File menu (the leftmost icon) and press X. Select Save Link Target and press X. You can change the filename to whatever you want, and set the destination.
If you want to save an image on the screen, highlight and follow the same steps, except choose Save Image instead of Save Link Target.

Sony’s Official PSP Web Site

Sony has an official PSP Web site that is bookmarked by default.Well, actually, you can’t delete the bookmark—you can either go to your own bookmarks or to Sony’s PSP site. Sony’s official PSP Web site is located at http://www.ps-portable.net. You can access the official PSP Web site by going to the bookmarks menu and selecting PSP instead of My Bookmarks. The PSP Web site has a host of neat things to do, from downloading game extras, to getting trailers for upcoming UMD movies to downloading images, photos, screen shots, and more. You can get the latest news from Sony on the PSP and buy gear for your PSP. Of course, this site will likely expand to offer you much more in the future, such as downloadable music, new games, and more, for a fee.
Using the My Account feature on Sony’s site requires registration on the PSP Underground site.While you can do this on your PSP, it’s a lot faster on a computer with a keyboard, and then you can just log in on your PSP and save your login information on it by selecting Remember Me on the login page.

How to Resolve Out of Memory Errors During Web Browsing?

To resolve most “out of memory” errors, you need to increase your cache.To change your cache size, press TRIANGLE to get to the Web browser menu, and then move to the toolbox icon and press CROSS . Select Settings and press CROSS Select Cache Settings and press CROSS. Press CROSS on the cache size (it defaults to 512K), and use your arrow keys to increase it to 2048. Press CROSS again, and then select OK and press CROSS to save your new cache settings.
Keep in mind that your PSP doesn’t have a lot of RAM (between 4MB and 32MB depending on the model), so some very complex pages may not load. If a page doesn’t load, it does not mean your PSP is broken.

Sony’s Official Web Browser

A few months after the PSP was released in the US (March 2005), Sony released a Web browser for the PSP in Japan. About a month after this, Sony released a U.S. version. The Web browser was part of a larger set of features in an update called System Update 2.0, which updated the PSP’s firmware to version 2.0. Along with the Web browser, the update provided for playback of the AAC (MPEG-4) audio format and more personalization features including wallpapers and themes. Photo sharing was also introduced.
The most anticipated feature was the Web browser, of course. Much to the chagrin of homebrew software developers, the required update would disable their ability to write and run homebrew applications on their PSPs. However, there’s a hack where homebrew developers can still get access to a Web browser by hacking one of Sony’s own products (as described in “Wipeout Pure: A Cool Game with a Fantastic Feature,” later in this chapter).

Sony’s “official”Web browser has a number of features found on regular Web browsers, sans keyboard support of course. The browser supports automatic scaling of pages to fit the PSP’s already high-resolution screen, Javascript (to an extent), bookmarks (called Favorites in Internet Explorer), saving files, submitting forms, and even proxy connections (for those on corporate networks).
The browser does not yet support Macromedia Flash or Java applets, but rumor has it Flash support is in the works. If you don’t have System Update 2.0 on your PSP, and you don’t want to run homebrew applications, you can update using your PSP’s built-in wireless Internet access, or download the update from Sony’s site at http://playstation.sony.com/psp.

Configuring Your PSP

You will now need to configure your PSP to use another DNS server. Follow the instructions discussed in that hack, but instead of entering the IP address of a web portal on the Internet, enter the IP address of your DNS server. Now fire up Wipeout Pure, choose the connection you just created/edited. Nothing too fancy, but the more links you add to the HTML, the more impressive and useful your web portal will be.

Congratulations! You can now create and access custom web pages from your PSP.

If you want your web portal to be accessible to other devices via the Internet, there are a few changes you must make to the method outlined above. First, you will need to change the following entry in scea.zone:

ingame A 192.168.0.100



to:

ingame A XX.XXX.X.XXX



where XX.XXX.X.XXX is the external IP address given to your computer/router. You can find out what this is by going to http://www.whatismyip.com.

The next thing you must do is set up your router to forward incoming traffic on ports 53 and 80 to your DNS/web server. Connecting to a web interface built into your router usually allows you to do this. Consult your router's documentation on how to forward ports to individual machines on your network. You will need to forward ports 53 (UDP) and 80 (TCP) to your web server's internal IP address (i.e., 192.168.0.100, as used earlier).

Finally, change the DNS setting on your PSP to use your computer/router's external IP address instead of your web server's internal IP address.

You should now be able to access your web portal from home or anywhere else.

The Web Server

Now that it is possible to have your PSP access the IP address of your choosing, it's time to set up a web server from which you can serve your custom web portal.

Like the DNS server, the first step is to install a web server on your computer. If you're using a Mac, you can turn on the preinstalled Apache web server by going into System Preferences, clicking the Sharing icon, and checking the box next to "Personal Web Sharing." If you're using Windows or Unix, you will need to install a web server such as Apache (Version 2 suggested). Apache is an open source web server that powers many commercial web sites. It can be downloaded at http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi. If you're using Windows, you will want to download the .msi install package and follow the instructions that come with it. If installing Apache in a Unix environment, you may be able to find a precompiled install package for your distribution. Otherwise, you'll have to compile the source code yourself and continue installation from there.

Like DNS servers, there are many web servers available. Also, if you have one already installed, there is no reason to install another.

When the PSP makes a request from Wipeout Pure, it asks for the /wipeout/index.html file. So what we must now do is create a file named index.html and place it where the PSP can access it.

Use this html file

Next, you need to create a directory called "wipeout" in your web server's root directory. On a Mac, the root directory will be /Library/WebServer/Documents, so you will create the directory /Library/WebServer/Documents/wipeout (this is not to be confused with the Library folder in your home directory). If you installed Apache in Windows, you will want to create the directory in C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\htdocs. Then, simply place index.html in the wipeout directory.

If you are using Apache in Unix, or are using another web server, consult the server's documentation to identify the root folder from which web pages are being served.

That's it! Now you can test it using your PSP.

How to Set Up the PSP DNS Server?

Before you can start serving web pages to your PSP, you need to first trick the PSP into believing that your web server is someone it's not. When you load up the "Downloads" section of Wipeout Pure, your PSP attempts to retrieve data from the following domain: ingame.scea.com. Normally, the IP address returned by your Internet service provider's DNS server would belong to Sony and would direct you to downloadable Wipeout Pure content. However, by setting up your own DNS server, it is possible to "trick" the PSP and return the IP address of a web server of your choice.

The first step in setting up a DNS server is installation. If you are using a Mac or a Unix variant, the most common DNS server used is BIND. If you are using Windows, a good (and free) DNS server is TreeWalk DNS (http://www.ntcanuck.com). Installation guides are included with both of these server packages when you download the software, and are pretty straightforward. Further, these are just recommendations; there are dozens of DNS server software packages available for virtually every platform.

Once installed, you now need to configure your DNS server to resolve ingame.scea.com to the IP address of your web server. There are two files you will need to create and edit: scea.zone and named.conf. First, we will create the scea.zone file. Using a text editor, create a new file called scea.zone (make sure there is no .txt appended to the filename) and type in the following:

; scea.zone
; scea.com db file
$TTL 86400
@ IN SOA scea.com dummy.scea.com. (
050622 ; Serial
10800 ; Refresh
3600 ; Retry
604800 ; Expire
86400 ; Min TTL
)

; Addresses for canonical names

NS 192.168.0.100
A 192.168.0.100
ingame A 192.168.0.100
webcluster A 192.168.0.100

$ORIGIN scea.com.

In the preceding example, 192.168.0.100 is used as the IP address of the DNS/web server you are setting up. Replace each occurrence of that IP address with the IP address of the machine you installed the DNS server on.

Where this file must be placed on your computer depends on the DNS server you installed. If you're using BIND, the file should be placed in either /etc/namedb or /var/named, depending on how it was installed. If you're using TreeWalk DNS, place the file in C:\Windows\System32\dns\etc. If you installed another DNS server, consult the documentation that came with the software to see where DNS Zone files must be stored.

All that's left to do now is to make your DNS server aware of the new DNS Zone you have just created. To do this, locate the named.conf file on your computer. If using BIND, this file may be found at /etc/named.conf. For those using TreeWalk DNS, the file is located at C:\Windows\System32\dns\etc\named.conf. Again, consult the server documentation if you are using another DNS server.

Once you've located the file, simply append this entry to the end and save the file:

zone "scea.com" {
type master;
file "scea.zone";
};

All that is left to do is restart the DNS server so it takes note of the new DNS Zone. If you're using BIND, run the named executable.

This will need to be done via a shell prompt, and most likely will require root privileges. To run the executable with root privileges, type the command sudo named. You will then be prompted for the root password to your machine.

If you're using TreeWalk DNS, access the TreeWalk control panel via the Start menu and click "Reload" and then "Start" if the server isn't already running.

That's all for the DNS server; now it's time to set up the web server.

More about browsing in PSP

If you haven't upgraded to Version 2.0, and you didn't already know about the Wipeout Pure hack, you are probably amazed by being able to surf the Web on your PSP. If you want to take things a step further, however, you're going to want to serve up your own PSP web portal customized with your personal favorite links. While creating that portal, you might want to embed your own QWERTY keyboard via Javascript that will work in place of the PSP's rather clunky text-entry screen. There are lots of tricks you can do with this starter hack. Thumb through the table of contents of this book, and you'll spot quite a few.

If you really want to take full advantage of the feature-rich web browser included with Version 2.0 of the firmware, you're going to want to spend some time making an index.html file at the root level of your Memory Stick, cataloguing all the files you may want to quickly access while on the go.

Offline browsing in PSP firmware 2.0

One of the best features of the PSP's browser is its ability to view files without a live Internet connection.

If you have a home page set (Tools > Settings> Home Page), your browser will insist on checking for a live Internet connection when you first launch it, and if you have your WLAN switch turned off, it will not launch properly. So make sure that your WLAN switch is in the On position, navigate to Network > Internet Browser, and hit the X button. As the PSP attempts to connect to the Internet, hit the O button to cancel the connection. Now hit the Triangle button to bring up the browser's interface.

You can avoid this problem by setting the home page to be a blank page (or by setting a home page that resides on your memory stick).

Navigate to the address bar and hit the X button. Here, you can browse the file structure of your PSP's Memory Stick (providing you know where everything is located) and view any files that the browser is capable of displaying (.html, .htm, .php, .txt, .png, .gif, .jpeg, .jpg, and .bmp, to name a few of the most common). For example, if you want to view a picture in your Photo folder, you would simply enter file:/PSP/PHOTO/nameofpicture.jpg in the address bar and hit the X button to load the image. For images, this isn't really that useful, but you can save all sorts of documents as text or HTML on your Memory Stick and load these files for reading on the go. This is a very useful little feature that I use for notes and reading on-the-go daily. And after you've finished entering the long text string to get to your important files, don't forget to bookmark the file (Triangle button > Bookmarks > X button > My Bookmarks > X button >Add to Bookmarks > X button) so that you can easily get to the file in the future.

Tools menu in PSP firmware 2.0 web browser

The Tools menu is particularly useful, not only because it is where you need to navigate to set the preferences for the browser, but because it is the first place you want to navigate whenever you are troubleshooting. Selecting Settings from this list opens the Settings screen, where you can set your home page, and under View Settings, you can choose to toggle on and off JavaScript, images, and animations, set proxy settings, and determine your cookie and cache settings. The other options under the Tools menu allow you to delete your cookies, cache, authentication information, and input history, as well as display your current connection status. If you ever get an out-of-memory error while trying to load a page, try navigating to the Tools menu and selecting Delete Cache, then navigating over to Refresh and hitting the X button. I've found that this often corrects the error, and the page loads successfully.

View menu in PSP firmware 2.0 web browser

The View menu lets you change the different display options for the browser. You can choose text size from small, medium, and large, switch the encoding, and switch between different display modes: Normal, Just-Fit, and Smart-Fit. In Normal display mode, the page width is not adjusted, so you must pan and scan around the web page. This is typically the mode I use, as it tends to best represent the normal experience of web browsing that I am used to from using a computer.

Just-Fit adjusts the page width to match the screen width; at least, this is what it is supposed to do. In reality, it seems to only manage to shrink the columns of some web pages. Smart-Fit reorganizes web pages so that the different columns are stacked on top of each other and the main content is at the top. This can make for some clunky navigation of some web sites, so I generally avoid this view mode; however, you may prefer scrolling up and down to scrolling side to side and up and down, as in Normal display mode.

File menu in PSP Frimware 2.0

The File menu gives you the option to close the browser, close the page, display the page's certificate, display the page information, save an image, save a link target, open a link in different tab, or open an address entry field. The most useful options in this menu are the Close Page option (to close an unwanted tabclose these often to keep from running out of memory), the Save Image option (to save images to your Photo folder for viewing on your PSP), and especially the Save Link Target option. Save Link Target allows you to download files to your PSP, whether they are a known file type or not. This is particularly useful if you come across an important web page that you want to save for later offline viewing. Simply use the L trigger to move back to the linking page, then place the cursor over the page you want to save, hit the Triangle, select the File menu, hit the X button, select Save Link Target, and hit the X button again. Take note of where you save the file, since you can navigate to it again in your web browser by typing file:/filelocation/filename.html. You can also use this feature to save files that are incorrectly recognized and try to load as text in the browser.

Tabbed browsing and JavaScript

One of the really cool things about this browser is that it is a fully functional JavaScript-capable browser with tabbed browsing capabilities. You have three tabs to work with and can switch between them by holding down the Square button and hitting the L or R triggers. You can also run most JavaScript. It can handle complex web sites like Flickr (http://www.flickr.com) and Gmail (http://gmail.google.com). Flash is currently the Achilles' heel of the PSP browser.

Browser basic controls of PSP with 2.0 Firmware

Hitting the Triangle button while the browser is loaded on your PSP displays the browser's full interface, complete with an address bar.

If you navigate over to the ? (or Help) menu and hit the X button, a screen showing all the basic controls of the browser will be displayed.

The L trigger moves back, while the R trigger moves forward. The Triangle displays the menu, the Circle closes the browser, and the X button is enter, and it will also open links you have selected. If you hit the X button and hold on a link, it opens the link in a new tab. Pressing the Square button while moving the analog stick scrolls, using the Square button with the directional keypad scrolls the page, and the Square button plus the triggers moves to the previous or next tab.

PSP browser by Nomad

One of the links that you'll find under the PSP section of the PSP Web Portal's main page is to the PSP browser (http://www.allxboxskins.com/pspbrowser.php). This PHP-based page embeds a browser inside the Wipeout Pure browser, so that you can surf different sites and keep a handy address bar at the top of the screen with instant access to Google. This solution helps avoid having to return back to the main portal page whenever you want to navigate to a new site that isn't linked on the page you are currently viewing

PSP Web Portal by Fujimax.

Once you click on X, the main page of the PSP Web Portal will load. Use the directional keypad to jump around between the different hyperlinks on the page.

There is a link to Google (http://www.google.com) in the upper-right corner of the screen, and an address bar at the bottom of the screen via which you can pull up any web page you like. Additionally, there is a list of links (tech, news, misc., psp) on the right-hand side of the screen. If you click on one of these links, a series of related links appears below a graphic of the link category.

If you move down to the address bar on the bottom of the page and hit the X button, the PSP's default text-entry screen will appear. I Highlighting Enter and hitting X brings me back to the PSP Web Portal screen.

After entering the address on this screen, I highlight the Enter button and hit X. This returns me to the PSP Web Portal with the text I just entered appearing in the address bar at the bottom of the page. Navigating to the Go button next to the address bar and hitting the X button loads the page. If you are used to flawless Web browsing on a broadband connection, prepare for a rude wake-up call. The Wipeout Pure browser can move very slowly at times, especially on graphics-rich sites that aren't designed for a small screen. My site loaded, although without the background graphic, and while the text loaded rather quickly, some of the images took some time to load. As you can see, the site is legible and the picture shows up clearly. However, it took about five minutes to load.

Have some fun exploring all that the PSP Web Portal has to offer. Whenever you become too lost in the Web, simply hit the Start button and choose "Go to Home Page" to return to the PSP Web Portal or Quit to return to the main menu of Wipeout Pure.

Redirecting the browser

Repeat all the steps from the last section up until you are ready to select your default connection. Highlight the connection and hit the Triangle button. An overlay menu will appear on the right side of the screen. Use the directional keypad to select Edit from this menu and then hit the X button.

All of these settings can be accessed from the main Settings menu on your PSP (Settings Network Settings). For the purposes of this hack, I'm showing you how to edit a preexisting connection from within Wipeout Pure, but if you think you will be surfing the Web via your PSP on a regular basis, it makes sense to set up a few extra connections.

I have three connections set up. Connection 1 is just the default connection for game playing over the Internet and downloading PSP updates and in-game downloads such as the Gamma Pack 1. The other two connections connect to various online portals, which I am about to discuss.

Once you select Edit, you will be presented with a series of screens. The first screen is the connection name. If you want to change it, you can, but I'm leaving it as Connection 1. Simply hit the right directional keypad to move on to the next screen. This is the WLAN Settings screen. Highlight Scan and press X to scan for any networks in range. Pick the one you want and hit X again. You will be returned to the WLAN Settings screen. Hit the right directional key to move on to the next screen. Configure the appropriate WLAN security settings and hit the right directional key again.

Now you will be presented with the Address Settings screen. You have a choice between Easy and Custom. Select Custom and hit the X key. This will immediately bring you to the IP Address Setting screen. You can either leave this set to Automatic and move on to the next screen to make the necessary changes to your DNS Settings to use a public PSP web portal, or you can choose Manual and hit the X button.

In the Manual Network Connection pane, I gave the PSP an IP address of 192.168.1.18 (so that it would not conflict with the other IP addresses I've assigned on my network), left the subnet to the default 255.255.255.0, and set the Default Router to 192.168.1.1, the address to my wireless access point. To make the changes, you have to hit X on each field you want to change, and then scroll up and down using the directional keypad until you hit the right number, then hit X again to get to the next field. If the network you are connecting to uses automatic (DHCP) assignment for some or all wireless users, you're better off selecting Automatic for the IP address assignment. My manual settings will probably not work for you.

If you'd rather not spend all this time making sure that the IP and Subnet settings are all perfect, you can skip much of this by selecting Automatic instead of Manual on the Address Settings screen, then when the DNS Settings screen appears, selecting Manual. This will allow you to only change the relevant DNS settings before moving on.

The important change for this hack is the Primary DNS. Even if your network uses DHCP assignment, you must override its default settings. You should make the Primary DNS 24.3.244.76, which is the address of the fujimax PSP Web Portal. If you want to check out the fujimax PSP Web Portal before performing this change on your PSP, visit http://24.3.244.76/wipeout/index.html from your desktop computer. You can, if you'd like, set the Secondary DNS to the DNS server that the wireless access point is configured to hand out. Although this gives you a back up if, for whatever reason, the fujimax PSP Web Portal is down, it won't let you redirect the browser to the PSP Web Portal.

The IP address of the fujimax PSP Web Portal changed once before from 67.171.70.72 to 24.3.244.76. If you try to access it and it doesn't come up, check in the sidebar of the blog associated with the portal (http://genius.fujumax.com/weblog/index.html) to see whether the IP address has changed yet again.

After you have completed all the proper entries, click on the right arrow on the directional keypad to move to the next screen. Make sure that Do Not Use is highlighted under Proxy Server and then hit the right arrow again to move on to the Setting List screen, which will give you a summary of the settings you have just entered. Hit the right arrow button again and press X to save your settings.

If you are on Version 2.0 of the firmware, you'll be asked whether you want to launch an Internet browser before you review your settings. You can choose Do Not Start unless you are in a hotspot that requires you to log into a web portal before you can access the Internet. Of course, 2.0 users don't need to use the Wipeout Pure hack, but I'm sure some of you want to try it out anyhow!

This will return you to the Select Connection screen. Select the connection that you just edited and hit the X button. When you hit this, the PSP sends out a request for http://ingame.scea.com/wipeout/index.html, but since you changed the Domain Name Server to 24.3.244.76, the request for this page is redirected by that DNS server to http://24.3.244.76/wipeout/index.html, the address for the fujimax PSP Web Portal. Click on the X button to enter the portal.

Using Wipeout Pure browser

Grab your copy of Wipeout Pure and stick it in your PSP. Click through all the beginning bits and load any preexisting game profiles. After you do all this, you should be presented with Wipeout Pure's main menu. Select the Download option and hit X.

When you select Download, an overlay screen will pop up saying "Game Experience May Change During Wireless Play." Select OK and press the X button. This will bring up another overlay screen for your Network Connection, prompting you to select from your preconfigured network connections.

Choose your default connection and hit the X button. This will load the Wipeout Pure browser, and the default browser page will be displayed with any available downloads. If you get an error message saying, "A connection error has occurred. The WLAN switch is not turned on," go back, switch the WLAN switch (located on the bottom-left side of your PSP) into the on position, and try again. If you get a message that your wireless access point is not available, check to make sure that your wireless network is running and configured properly and try again.

Once you have the default page loaded, use the directional keypad to select Downloads and hit the X button. A new page will load with a set of PSP download terms and conditions. Use the directional keypad to highlight Accept and hit the X button. A list of available downloads will appear. Highlight the download you want to grab and hit the X button. A more detailed description of the download will appear. Again, use the directional keypad to navigate to the actual download and hit the X button. An overlay progress bar will appear and the download will begin.

Once you are finished using the browser for its default purposes, simply hit the Start button and select Quit to return to Wipeout Pure's main menu.

Now that you've checked out the browser for its intended purposes, you should trick it into doing some real web surfing.