Hacker News Reader

Comment by pkhamre | Hacker News Reader

Related to the new Facebook Home app-launche feature?

Yup. The Facebook Home pretty much communicates directly with the Facebook App which has all the permissions needed to be a Home Replacement/Launcher.

This is why Facebook Home does not need any permissions.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.facebook.h...

Well it is no wonder they had 'Too many methods'[1] in their Facebook android application if they've packed all the features into their facebook client, and left their messaging and launcher applications as thin wrappers around the core application. Is there any good reason they don't split the functionality to the appropriate applications? Then maybe they wouldn't have to hack dalvik to run a simple facebook client.

[1] : https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/under-th...

Before I installed Facebook Home last night, I'd replaced the Facebook app with a Chrome bookmark, but kept Messenger. I still received and could reply to text notifications, so Messenger is definitely a real app.

I wonder if Home is just a shell so they can maintain huge install counts on the main Facebook app. Then again, they could require the main app for API access and still use Home separately to handle drawing the Home UI and listening for Home interactions.

Wow, I hadn't noticed that.

I wonder if this new permission is for the purpose of app switching, since the launcher doesn't seem to require this permission in it's current functionality. It seems like a bad permission to add if the interface doesn't yet require it. Are they jumping the gun on new features or using it in the backend?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com