How-to: Browse the Web while gaming
My CNET colleague Sarju Shah over at Gamespot has put together a great rundown of Web browsers you can run inside of the latest video games. The four solutions tested include PlayXpert, Steam, Rogue, and Xfire
Why run these instead of your standard browser? Simple, these browsers have been designed to run as lean and mean as possible, and play nice with an application that's running in full-screen mode. They also feature niceties you won't find in your standard Web browser like hot keys that can make them appear or disappear in an instant, and transparency that lets you continue to play a game in full screen while looking up things like cheat codes and walkthroughs, right on top of the action.
Shah has put four different solutions through their paces, and has screenshots that will show you what each one looks like in various games. Worth noting is that all of the included options are PC only, which means Mac and console gamers are out of luck.
In-game browsers let you surf the Web while keeping you from having to alt+tab to another application. Pictured here is PlayXpert running on top of Bethesda's Fallout 3.
(Credit: CNET Networks / Gamespot.com)
Josh Lowensohn writes for Webware.com, CNET's blog about Web applications and services. E-mail Josh, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/Josh. 
Isn't Sony/BMG the brilliant folks who gave us rootkits on music CD's? Why would I trust their games again?
I have a nice dual screen set-up and had the same idea as you, except as soon as you click on the other screen, or Alt-Tab the game s**t's itself and crashes, which shows Cnet chose thier pictures well because Fallout 3 is really bad at that. Older games seem to be able to cope better. I can Alt-Tab from DoW or TF2 semi-fine, it doesn't crash but it takes a while for it to get back on its legs n show me something other than a black screen. If you only want one particular web-page then you can leave it open and then load the game, but it's not useful if say mid-Fallout 3 you want to use The Vualt Wiki or other random site's with multiple pages for each quest.
I originally used my Ps3 on my second screen and browsed web with that, but its not the best browser in the world. though the Steam update was really useful and I instantly added a ton of "non-Steam Games". Bummer it doesn't store bookmarks, but at least it's got Google as a homepage.
- by RazZziel February 20, 2009 4:02 PM PST
- You forgot to mention a nice, free and cross-platform solution: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXS3xKV-UM0
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