Millions of people have the Facebook app on their Android phone. Far fewer users have installed Facebook Home, the apperating system that debuted on the HTC First, the phone nobody bought. So now you can get Home on a wider array …
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It’s been a couple months since we first saw the fruits of team Paranoid Android’s labor around in-app pop-up window multitasking, and it looks like Paul Henschel and co. are finally sharing the finished product. HALO, as it’s called, loosely combines the ideas behind Samsung’s Multi Window and FaceBook’s Chat Heads into a slick multitasking interface. The feature is activated from the notification tray. It places an icon — or halo — on the display, which can be moved around very much like Chat Heads, or dismissed by double-tapping and dragging it towards the red X at the top. Swiping sideways from the halo shows a series of white lines and text bubbles that match and highlight the notifications in the status bar. Releasing your finger is like tapping on the selected notification, but instead of launching full-screen, the app opens in a pop-up window on top of whatever’s already running, just like Multi Window. The background app continues to run while you interact with the foreground app — to dismiss the pop-up window, simply tap outside of it. Other cool functionality includes swiping up to dismiss the last notification and the ability to pin apps permanently to the halo. But what’s really most exciting is that team Paranoid Android‘s decided to make HALO open source so anyone can be involved. Check out the awesome demo video after the break.
Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile, Samsung, Google, Facebook
Via: xda-developers
Source: Paranoid Android (Google+)
Emojis not giving that missive the right oomph? A Facebook Messenger for Android update has brought stickers into that mix with characters like cats and aliens, lending your chat head conversation just the right dose of nuance. It popped up yesterday as a hidden feature, but now you can download the final version at Google Play (at the source) — then, just click on the smiley icon in the text input box to start dropping the cute bombs.
Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Software, Mobile, Facebook
Via: Phandroid
Source: Facebook (Google Play)
Unlike the entertaining and lively Chatheads the ad recommend we put on our Facebook Home screens, we don’t get to choose floating family members. It’s a dystopian situation when everyone matches our interests and we don’t feel obliged to try …
iOS device owners will soon get to experience the joy of Chatheads through an update to Facebook’s main app later today. Sort of.
First, the bad news. Facebook Home isn’t coming to iOS anytime soon due to the underlying technologies that restrict the way apps interact with the iPhone’s operating system. Now, the good news: Facebook is pushing an update to its iOS app right now that’ll add support for chat heads. Mike Schroepfer, CTO and vice president of engineering at Facebook, just announced the news here at D: Dive Into Mobile, and if all goes well, you should see the update hit your own device later in the day.
According to Schroepfer: “The goal from the beginning was to get this experience into everyone’s hands. As part of that, we’re shortly going to announce an update to our iOS app that’ll add chat heads. Multiple messages, multiple threads, same design, etc. You have to be within the app — that’s a limitation of iOS. You can’t draw across other apps when you aren’t in the app.”
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Facebook
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