MK808B Plus Fullscreen Browser / Digital Signage

[PsuFan]

Hello,

I've been using the MK808B and recently trying to use the MK808B Plus for digital signage. All I want to do is open a browser fullscreen on boot to a local URL. With my MK808B I found the Finless v1.7, which had an "auto hide" menu bar feature that worked perfectly. Now with the MK808B Plus, Finless seems to have abandoned the auto hide feature and many of the Apps in the store don't work properly, cause the browser to crash or hide the bar but the browser doens't resize to use the space causing a empty black space. The other problem I am having is: all the auto start programs don't support browsers, i.e. they dont specify a URL, so the browser just opens to the wrong page and browsers such as Firefox do not have homepages. I did have a App on the MK808B called "App Rotator" that started a browser and spec'ed a URL, however it no longer works on KitKat. It spams the app, starting it over and over.

Has anyone done this in the past or know how to achieve this?

Thanks,
PsuFan

[mitchell4you]

Hmm..
You can use 'android tuner' to make a 'browser' startup after boot

For firefox
There is a addon to set a 'url' as startup page and to 'enable fullscreen'

Note.. in about:config
There are probably options to enable h/w acc.. and codec support

Anyway.. goodluck

[PsuFan]

Thanks, I found the addon for the homepage (Home Changer). I have been using an addon called "Auto Fullscreen", but it leaves a black bar where the system bar used to be. I.e. does not resize firefox. I'll try some other addons.

[PsuFan]

Seems like the biggest problem is getting a full screen browser. Firefox simply does not handle full screen via app store apps or full screen addons properly, it doesn't resize the window for the newly acquired area.

I did find an app called Full Screen Browser, which almost does everything I need, but I needed to play sound effects with HTML5. This crashes the browser, it also does not have an error logging and strange javascript support. (Doesn't support optional parameters).

[prahjister]

Seems like the biggest problem is getting a full screen browser. Firefox simply does not handle full screen via app store apps or full screen addons properly, it doesn't resize the window for the newly acquired area.

I did find an app called Full Screen Browser, which almost does everything I need, but I needed to play sound effects with HTML5. This crashes the browser, it also does not have an error logging and strange javascript support. (Doesn't support optional parameters).

I know a guy that wrote an app for a custom ROM I built for him. That does exactly what you are asking. I don't know if it handles HTML 5 or sounds but i can see if he is interested. I know it goes full screen as he is migrating to these sticks as well.

[PsuFan]

I just need to play a sound from javascript, I don't need any other html 5 features.

[danilocelic]

I know a guy that wrote an app for a custom ROM I built for him. That does exactly what you are asking. I don't know if it handles HTML 5 or sounds but i can see if he is interested. I know it goes full screen as he is migrating to these sticks as well.

The app that we wrote is a relatively straightforward Android app that essentially wraps a webview to show content. I'm not quite sure of the full capabilities, but in a quick search, for Android 4.4 the web view should have most of the capabilities of Chrome version 30: https://developer.chrome.com/multide...bview/overview According to http://caniuse.com/#feat=audio The HTML5 audio feature has been fully supported since version 10.5, so that should work.

Our app hides the navigation bar at the bottom automatically when it starts up as well as if you switch to the app if it was running in the background (for example, if you went to system settings without closing our app first). This worked fine on the MK808B which I think was running 4.2.x

However, I'm not sure if it's the move to 4.4, or something specific with the MK808B Plus, our app doesn't hide the status bar (bar at the top of the screen with the time and network connection icon). I think that there's a way to hide that as well, but I haven't tried making that change yet to see how well that might work.

Offhand, I'm not sure if hiding the navigation bar and/or the status bar is something that requires root access, but the system ROMs we've worked with supplied by prahjister have had full root access and/or had the SuperSu app installed that allowed us to have root access for our uses.

I can see it being useful to have a basic app that you can set a URL for it to load, and have the app start when the device boots, and have the app go into full screen with no nav or status bars. I'll look to see what it would take to extract just those features out of our app to make such an app.

Enjoy,
Danilo Celic

[danilocelic]

Also, with the system ROM that prahjister supplied to us, the Navigation bar can be hidden, and it remembers it's show/hidden state between reboots. I don't know if the built in browser will resize to take up the space that would be available after the nav has been hidden. In my searches, I haven't seen a setting to make the Android browser go into full screen. I know that Chrome will hide the address bar after you have scrolled down on the page. I haven't tried to see if Chrome will hide the address bar if you use JavaScript to scroll the page down, so that may be something to try if you're comfortable with JavaScript.

Enjoy,
Danilo Celic

[prahjister]

Addidtions

I tested out Full!Screen from the play store to remove the top bar. It works. The problem is the wallpaper goes to default. I had to decompile the framework-res.apk and set the wallpaper that i wanted as the default wall paper to make it stick. But if i remember right with kitkat there is an immersive mode you can maybe setup in the app and set in the app to go full screen. API level 19 i believe. A little googling can find it.

[PsuFan]

I've had no luck with full!screen in KitKat. It doesn't remove the bottom menu bar. Even when I do manage to hide the menu bar, Firefox pops up a black bar where the menu is supposed to be.... how do you report a firefox bug?

[mattrb]

I've had no luck with full!screen in KitKat. It doesn't remove the bottom menu bar. Even when I do manage to hide the menu bar, Firefox pops up a black bar where the menu is supposed to be.... how do you report a firefox bug?

Firefox has always had issues with the top area not hiding when full screen. You need to move on to different browser.

[PsuFan]

@mattrb, Got any that auto full screen?