Future suggestion: Publish as Chrome app?

[keithzg]

This is certainly the early days of Android apps on Chrome, but I did just try the app using the official ARC Welder app from Google to change the .apk into a Chrome app, and it runs without any major bugs that I can find.

True, it doesn't make sense yet to publish this. Among other things, the window isn't resizable (when you build from the APK you have to hardcode either portrait or landscape orientation and tablet/phone/maximized as the form factor). But assuming Android apps on Chrome become a major thing (and Google does seem to be working towards that, albeit incrementally), this should probably be investigated.

As it stands, testing on my Chromebook Pixel (first-gen) running 42.0.2311.67 beta (64-bit), I've noticed the following:

• Entering my instance's details and refreshing the listings works fine.
• Navigation works fine with both mouse and with touch, although the way Android handles keyboard arrow keys isn't always the most convenient for this type of app.
• Pressing the button to open in a browser correctly opens a new tab in Chrome.
• "Read out" doesn't work; presumably that functionality is missing from the Android VM that they're using.
• It's actually a bit laggy, which on a Chromebook that's faster than all other Chromebooks apart from the new Pixel is a bit of a problem, although people running Linux, OS X and Windows should also be able to run ARC apps.

Curious if any devs or other users have any thoughts or experiences with this now. For reference, the main Google developer page is https://developer.chrome.com/apps/getstarted_arc .

[stefan-niedermann]

Related to https://github.com/nextcloud/news-android/issues/613

As far as i know there are some changes needed, like adding a Manifest file. Maybe you can prepare a Pull Request and add the missing pieces and a step-by-step guide? This will make it more likely that News on Chrome might eventually happen. 🚀

[beerisgood]

Related to #613

It's more related to https://github.com/nextcloud/news/issues/790

[stefan-niedermann]

@beerisgood i don't think so. This issue is about publishing this Android-app as a chrome app (chrome is able to run native Android apps, not only web apps). So it is important to make a few adjustments like reacting on scroll and click events and so on in the Android app. #613 is about this kind of adjustments.

You linked issue is about the web app (which for sure can also be packaged as a chrome extension or a chrome app), but it is essentially a different app, with a different code base.

[David-Development]

If anyone wants to give it a shot - feel free but there doesn't seem to be reasonable interest - considering that this issue has been open for almost a decade now.