First off, kudos to all the Discourse developers and the community that supports it! For years I have participated in Discourse-powered forums, primarily in the FOSS communities, and recently I started a Discourse server of my own for my local neighborhood to supplement our Yahoo Groups email listserv system ( see how diplomatic I was there? ). I continue to discover features like hidden gems as I explore it from an admin perspective. But on to my topic:
I am in the tiny minority of people who use Android without Google services, and unless things have changed since this post, I understand there will not be an F-droid app option. However, are there any plans to release the app on the Amazon app store in addition to the Google Play store? I donāt know how much additional work that takes, but Iām sure people like me would appreciate it.
Thanks for the link and swift response! Unfortunately after I added my Discourse site, I got the error message about requiring Google Chrome stable. I believe that is only available through the Google Play store, so I suppose Iām out of luck for now. Itās not a deal breaker for me, because the mobile web interface is so great on Firefox that, when combined with the email notifications, I have the functionality I need on my Android phone.
Iāll have to check that out, thanks. This brings up another question for me: is this dependence on the Chrome app technically equivalent to using that browser to access the Discourse site via the web interface? Some people like me deliberately choose not to use Google software because we do not trust the software to keep data private and not share information with Google, including our Discourse site credentials and site data. I noticed for example in a recent version of Google Chrome, buried in the preferences was a setting that by default sent all your passwords to Google. You could ostensibly disable this, and maybe it doesnāt send the information if you are not āsigned inā, but only the most naive at this point think Google products are trustworthy in terms of respecting privacy. You shouldnāt have to dance around checking every nook and cranny of settings after every update to ensure all your āopt-outā settings werenāt āresetā or whatever.
In this sense I suppose it is best not to offer the Discourse Android app any other way than the Google Play store as long as it requires Google Chrome, because then those choosing to install it have already chosen to trust Google and there is no risk of someone being inadvertently misled.
Yes. The āappā only handles notifications - opening a site via the app simply loads the site via Google Chrome. Youād need to fork and modify the app to remove this reliance - and then have a different browser on your device to display the site.
If it is any consolation at allā¦ You are actually not that much of a minority, or even the majority. Many Android users are in China, and they have to live with no Google services, no Facebook, no Twitter, no Dropbox, no nothing. No Chrome for example.
Reading more about push notifications led me to discover this from Mozilla support page:
Firefox for Android uses a combination of the Mozilla Web Push service and Googleās Cloud Messaging platform to deliver notifications to Firefox for Android.
Ha! I may research this more at some point but sometimes you have to know when to move onā¦
@schungx: no, that is no consolation at all, for many reasons. But I would prefer to keep the discussion focused on the technical questions if you donāt mind.
). I continue to discover features like hidden gems as I explore it from an admin perspective. But on to my topic: