Google pushes developers to adapt Android apps for Chromebooks--Are You Gonna Do It?

[cklester]

How many of y'all are developing apps for Android+Chromebooks?

Google wants Android developers to be excited about adapting apps for larger devices.

That's pretty exciting, as B4A is already poised to accommodate this quite handily.

In May, Google reported that use of the 10-year-old operating system (OS) grew 92 percent over the last year, which was reportedly "five times the rate of the PC market." At the time, Patrick Fuentes, Chrome OS's developer relations engineering manager, said that made Chrome OS the "fastest growing and second most popular desktop OS."

It's clear that the OS is banking on Android apps to help continue that growth. In fact, this week's blog asserted that "there’s no doubt adapting for larger screens will be a priority for developers in 2022."

So, who is currently developing Android apps for those big Chromebook screens?

 

[andymc]

I'm happy to check my apps work okay on Chrome books. What's a good Chromebook to buy for testing? Ideally something that represents what most people would have. Nothing too expensive.

 

[LucaMs]

?

 

[Sandman]

I'm using B4XPages, and I imagine that would be a bad match for Chromebooks. I mean, the app is locked into portrait mode, that's not going to be great on the big landscape screen the Chromebook has.

I know I've seen a thread where a forum member(*) posted some code to make B4XPages support changing of direction somehow (I never tried or investigated), so it seems possible somehow. I wonder if Erel consider B4XPages feature complete now and will only receive bugfixes, or if there will land an updated version that can handle change of screen orientation.

(*) Can't remember thread or member name - sorry!

 

[udg]

the app is locked into portrait mode,

From B4xPages definition thread: One notable limitation is that in B4A, the activity that holds all the pages should be locked to a single orientation.
A single orientation could be landscape not necessarily portrait. An that counts for B4A (i.e. there's no "orientation" for a B4J project; look at module Main)

I dind't have a look at Chrome OS requirements yet, but if it's a desktop enviroment for notebook-alike devices I don't know which among B4A and B4J will be closer to it. Anyway, thanks to the common language B4X (and Erel's help) our efforts to comply with the new OS won't be that demanding..

 

[Erel]

The discussed limitation doesn't really come from B4XPages, but rather from the way that B4A (and also default Android behavior) handle screen size changes.
In B4J and B4i the screen size is expected to change many times and these changes are managed using the resize event as well as other designer features.
In B4A the activity size never changes. The activity is recreated when the size changes.
It is possible and actually likely that I will make an option to set B4A to handle screen size changes in a similar way to B4i / B4J. It will not be trivial as it will affect many existing implementations.

 

[Sandman]

It is possible and actually likely that I will make an option to set B4A to handle screen size changes in a similar way to B4i / B4J. It will not be trivial as it will affect many existing implementations.

I know you're not overly fond of discussing upcoming changes. Thanks for doing so in this case, I imagine there's a lot of people finding this topic very interesting, as do I.