Nook App Mods, Part 2
Despite its obvious strengths, the NookDevs browser isn’t really suited for everyday use, and the B&N browser is quite good, but doesn’t download files. I’m not an Android developer, so writing a browser from scratch was out of the question, and so was porting something existing, like Opera Mini for Android. Luckily, the decompiled code of the B&N browser turned out to have some scraps of a Download Manager in it, which, combined with some common sense and a bit of programming experience, made it possible to add file-downloading support.
Features
Clicking a link to a file opens the Downloads window in the browser and downloads files to the “my downloads” folder (you need to create it yourself) on the internal card. The same window is also accessible via the GoTo menu.
I want to warn you up front: there’s practically no way to add folder selection, auto-open, and so on – nobody’s going to give us the app’s source code, and in decompiled code the difficulty of development is comparable to coding in assembly.
Download link
http://runserver.net/nook/Browser.apk
Source in smali:
http://runserver.net/nook/Browser.smali.7z
Installation
Warning!
On first install you need to clear the browser’s database, otherwise trying to download a file will crash it. Clearing it wipes history, bookmarks, and cookies.
Command for deleting it:
adb shell rm /data/data/com.bravo.app.browser/databases/browser
To install, just write the APK file to the /system/app folder, replacing the existing browser:
adb push Browser.apk /system/app
Originally published 2010-09-15.