Media Bar in Android TV

[Haioken]

So while I can see where you're coming from - With the ATV app, until you scroll down from the top onto something that has a backgrop, the problem is that the interface is objectively ugly as heck (And if we're honest, so is the vanilla web experience).

There are some very talented people developing themes and plugins to beautify the interface, modernize it and turn JF into something that easily visually beats the UI of your major alternatives (Emby, Plex, etc); I don't quite understand why you're so very intent to discard it and focus on something that essentially means maintaining multiple UI code bases.

However, to avoid harping on this further, I'll see what I can do myself instead.

I had a brief play (~60 mins) with Android Studio and GeckoView, was able to get something visually workable but broke remote integration - something about GeckoView mangles the inputs, maybe I'll throw some more weight behind that and see if I can get the remote to behave.
Like, I can record scancodes and see what I expect to see, but the moment I invoke a GeckoSession, the up arrow becomes an enter button, whereas the normal enter button and the remaining DPAD fall silent.

I'm not an app developer, I'm a Sysadmin - so if anybody has some experience, I'd love to hear from you with some advice.

Current thoughts:

1. I'm using GeckoView instead of WebView because it is entirely packaged within the app, meaning it does not fall victim to the "what version of webview does this device support?" issue.
   
2. Geckoview mangles the input when it gains focus, so maybe....
   
3. Add a transparent overlay in front of GeckoView with a frameset
   
4. Steal focus with the transparent overlay
   
5. Maybe Grab inputs from the overlay?
   
6. Rewrite inputs with string names
   
7. Because GeckoView has no equivalent to WebView evaluateJavascript, I'll need to write a dodgy firefox extension to pull that info from the android side somehow
   
8. Retrieve the scan codes translated into strings, lookup in array and fire the appropriate keydown / keyup events in JS (something like dispatchEvent)
   

I'm particularly concerned about 6, 7.