Any love to Android Stock browser?

[akhile...@gmail.com]

Are you guys planning to add any support for android stock browser? Without that it becomes hard to build a cross-platform hybrid mobile application using Polymer :(

[Eric Bidelman]

No plans at this time. It's not an evergreen browser and unfortunately we have to draw the line somewhere :\

On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 5:02 PM, <akhile...@gmail.com> wrote:

Are you guys planning to add any support for android stock browser? Without that it becomes hard to build a cross-platform hybrid mobile application using Polymer :(

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[Eugene Oksman]

Eric,

I totally understand your decision. 

Do you know whether it will be possible to embed a "ChromeView" inside an Android app or the PhoneGap container? We can always recommend that our customer download Chrome. The embedded browser scenario is a lot more tricky.

Eugene

[Eric Bidelman]

Should be. But Chrome web view won't be supported by older devices (just as Chrome for Android is not). If your customers can download Chrome in the first place, you should build a web app ;) 

[eatth...@gmail.com]

Check out Crosswalk https://crosswalk-project.org/.  It gives you a Chromium-based WebView component you can use.  You can use the Crosswalk+Cordova download they have available and just drop in your app.  I am working on a project right now with this using Polymer and it works very well although it does beef up the APK size a bit.  I haven't tested this yet, but Android 4.4 has a new WebView that might work with Polymer so Crosswalk may not be needed for those devices and you can get by with just Cordova/Phonegap.  For iOS, I believe you can just use plain Cordova/Phonegap as the WebView component there is much better.  

[Stefan Ritter]

This is a great slide deck on the reality/myth behind 'the' Android browser: http://slides.com/html5test/the-android-browser - brace yourself it's a sad story...

Makes projects like https://crosswalk-project.org/ just so much more important for bridging the gap to Android L

[eatth...@gmail.com]

Oh man, that was great.  Seems to me like the WebView is a component that needs to be ripped out of the OS and updated separately like the keyboard.  If that ends up breaking hybrid apps and stuff occasionally, then so be it - it'd be a heck of a lot better than the current situation.