Hacker News Reader

Comment by munimkazia | Hacker News Reader

The "send to chromecast" feature on Firefox android app is awesome, but I was kinda hoping that they added this to the desktop application too. I know that stuff like this is usually left for add-ons, but there isn't a good firefox add on which does Chromecast, unlike the several options on the Chrome web store.

View on HN

Is there even a stable, published API for this that a desktop app could use? I always believed that Chromecast support was a platform thing handled by the Chromecast API which is effectively a binary blob.

Regardless, I imagine that Firefox will end up with some sort of support for pushing streams when the MatchStick is released, but whether it supports Chromecast is a question yet unanswered.

Oh. I am kinda surprised that the API isn't an open API. I don't know why I just assumed that it is.

The Chromecast libraries are available to all Android apps. On the PC, you have to actually run your Chromecast app inside of Chrome. So, Firefox would have to write an equivalent library.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=901803#c47

"Like Hubert said, Chromecast isn't open source. Getting it to work on desktop would require some reverse engineering and may or may not be impossible (I've heard that the Desktop extension for Chrome is all JS though, so that code may be useable)."

You might also be interested in the "casting support" bugs:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=92192...

I just assumed that the Chromecast API is open. I am a little surprised to learn that it's not.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com