firefox.pngI ranted a few days ago about how frustratingly almost-there my Chromecast is as a productivity and onscreen reading aid, chiefly because it just does not facilitate screen mirroring on Android except for a limited range of devices – and in any case, links this to Android OS 4.4.2 or above. You can even mirror the entire screen of any PC or Linux-based device running the Chrome browser to Chromecast using a Chrome extension – but not most Android devices. And short of full screen mirroring, the next best productivity and big-screen ereading option is mirroring the browser, allowing reading of HTML texts and use of browser-based office and other productivity aids, but Google Chrome for Android still, bizarrely, doesn’t support mirroring to Chromecast.

However, as of a December 1st update, one of the other favorite choices for an Android browser – Firefox – does support mirroring the browser to Chromecast. Users have immediately picked up on the feature. “The mirroring option to Chromecast is what I really want native to a browser,” writes one reviewer on the Google Play Store. Some other reviewers, though, do report problems. And I found one on my device: the option to mirror to Chromecast that is supposed to show up on the Tools menu when working in the browser just doesn’t show up on my Google Nexus 7 2012 device.

I assume this is the same issue as previously with the main screen mirroring feature itself: it just won’t work on my vintage of Nexus 7. So for now, it’s back to square one.

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