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Issue 625333 link

Starred by 14 users

Issue metadata

Status: Assigned
Owner:
Last visit > 30 days ago
Cc:
Components:
EstimatedDays: ----
NextAction: ----
OS: Chrome
Pri: 3
Type: Feature



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ARC: Show Android widgets in Chrome OS desktop

Reported by kenny.st...@gmail.com, Jul 1 2016

Issue description

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS x86_64 8517.0.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/53.0.2773.0 Safari/537.36
Platform: 8517.0.0 (Official Build) canary-channel kip

Steps to reproduce the problem:
N/A (feature request)

What is the expected behavior?
N/A (feature request)

What went wrong?
N/A (feature request)

Did this work before? N/A 

Chrome version: 53.0.2773.0  Channel: canary
OS Version: 8517.0.0
Flash Version: Shockwave Flash 22.0 r0

Right now, if there are no windows open on a Chromebook, the desktop looks rather plain and stifling with a complete lack of at-a-glance information. With the Play Store now coming to Chromebooks, however, there's not only millions of apps to install, but thousands of widgets… unfortunately, however, in the current implementation, nowhere for them to go.

So, why not bring an Android widget container to Chrome OS that essentially runs as a background app? If we allow Android widgets running inside the Android LXC container to simply float on the Ash desktop by way of a widget engine inside the Android container that runs as a fully transparent, always-open, always-maximized Android app without window controls and without a Shelf icon, it would make the desktop *much* less boring ― right now, as it stands, it's kind of stifling if you've got a shelf, a launcher, a wallpaper, and a window manager, but a blank desktop.
 
I take back that claim regarding the widget engine being inside the container: It would be an even better idea to render Android widgets on Chrome OS as floating panel windows, but again with no Shelf icon.
Developers, please change the title to "ARC: Render Android widgets as always-open Panels." That would much more accurately reflect what this bug report is about.

Comment 3 by varkha@chromium.org, Jul 20 2016

Cc: abodenha@chromium.org tbuck...@chromium.org jennschen@chromium.org
Components: UI>Shell>WindowManager
Labels: -Pri-2 Pri-3
Summary: ARC: Show Android widgets in Chrome OS desktop (was: ARC: Show Android widgets in Ash)
#2, I actually prefer the [slightly modified] current title as it doesn't impose the implementation details and leaves more territory for a feature discussion focused on UX.
And thanks for the suggestion, we are reviewing those although I would not expect anything quick here as it crosses a lot of lines, dependencies and UX concerns.
Maybe there could be a setting for enable/disable widgets, so an empty container use no ressources for non-users. 
Owner: mitsuji@chromium.org
Status: Assigned (was: Unconfirmed)
Giving to mitsuji@ for triage.
Still no triage for Issue 622086 after 8 months, and no activity on this issue since September.

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