Facebook Announces “Home”, A Homescreen Replacement For Standard Android • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook Announces “Home”, A Homescreen Replacement For Standard Android

#121

Post by tolle » Thu, Apr 04, 2013, 10:54 PM UTC

gknoy wrote: post #107

nollidge wrote: post #2

Why? EDIT: seriously, why? Were people really clamoring for more Facebook in their lives?

I wouldn't mind Facebook messaging being more tightly integrated with my text messaging interface. My android phone lets me put text messages as a widget on my lock screen, for example -- but I can't do that with FB messages, which is something I use a lot more than SMS. Nearly everything else about Facebook I could care less about, but FB messaging is something that my wife and I use a LOT.

You can use their messenger app for SMS as well. Might solve your issue, but I'd imagine that there is some drawbacks. I have not tested it myself.

Re: Facebook Announces “Home”, A Homescreen Replacement For Standard Android

#122

Post by r00fus » Thu, Apr 04, 2013, 11:40 PM UTC

drivingmenuts wrote: post #46

jcomis wrote: post #38

I do think replacing the launcher was a smart idea, but I'm just not sure if that kind of integration is useful in FB's case. Maybe I'm a minority, but I just don't route my life through FB and do not want to, at all. This only seems useful to people who exclusively use their phone for FB. Why would I want a layer of FB between me and the home screen where all my other apps live? The UI did look pretty slick, though…

Depends on what sort of permissions FB asks for on install. My suspicion is that they'll want everything they can get their hands on (location at a minimum). Eventually, they're going to want to replace your phonebook, etc. The sad thing is, people will just let them.

They definitely want to replace your phone book. Perhaps even your address book (take me to where Jon R's office - even Siri would balk b/c you likely would not have his office address in your addy book).

If the accuracy was high, these would be killer features for many people.

Re: Facebook Announces “Home”, A Homescreen Replacement For Standard Android

#123

Post by brian_cloutier » Thu, Apr 04, 2013, 11:46 PM UTC

BHSPitMonkey wrote: post #117

brian_cloutier wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there's still a pain point there. To change it back to the old way you have to go to settings, then hit "Apps", then scroll to find the home screen app you no longer want, then hit its "Clear Defaults" button. There's never any text that explains "this will let you choose a homescreen again", or really anything that will help you know to look for the Clear Defaults button.

Uninstalling it will also accomplish this, which I expect most people will do if they want to get rid of it. I do agree that it should be more straightforward within Settings, though; It would be nice to go to Settings > Home Screen and have the first option be something like "Choose which Home Screen software to use".

While that works in this case, it's only because Facebook breaks their functionality into multiple apps. If "Facebook" registered a homescreen, instead of "Home" registering it, then how would you remove the default? Sure, you could uninstall facebook and then reinstall it, but that's a pretty painful workaround.

Another use-case that should be fixed, the instagram app has registered to intercept browse intents for its domain. So, clicking on a link in twitter will show you that picture in the instagram app. The problem is when badly written apps do this, urls like http://instagram.com/developer/ will also open the app, but it will notice it doesn't know how to handle that url, and either quit or crash.

Sure, developers should know better. But I'd really love a way of saying "for the next intent that fires, let me chose the default again".

You could toggle this flag and then hit home to reset the homescreen app. Or you could toggle this flag then hit an instagram link and say "just for this one link, use chrome".

Unfortunately, while that would be a fantastic tool for developers, it's probably not a practical solution. There are enough edge cases that it would be hard to implement, and very hard to educate users on how to use.

Re: Facebook Announces “Home”, A Homescreen Replacement For Standard Android

#124

Post by brian_cloutier » Thu, Apr 04, 2013, 11:48 PM UTC

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #120

brian_cloutier wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there's still a pain point there. To change it back to the old way you have to go to settings, then hit "Apps", then scroll to find the home screen app you no longer want, then hit its "Clear Defaults" button. There's never any text that explains "this will let you choose a homescreen again", or really anything that will help you know to look for the Clear Defaults button.

I've always had a ton of problems with defaults and intents. To this day I still have certain intents that ask me every single time, no matter how many time I choose a default.

Do you have an example by any chance? I've noticed this but it hasn't happened to me in a while.