The launcher of Facebook Home was awful. There were no widgets, docks, folders and personalization features in it. Only few users tried it and new dock has come up last month for the surprise to users. Now, the dock has the ability to drag apps to folders.
The trouble is with the Home, which substitutes the home screen and launcher rather than adding up. This makes the apps go deep inside two taps. Initially, one have to open its full-screen news feed on the lock screen called Cover Feed, and then use a gesture to bring up the launcher.
One can customize the apps on the home screen, though its messy. It is inconvenient to access a variety of apps beyond Facebook frequently. There was no Dock or folders to help organize your apps, and no widgets to give you the info trapped inside them at a glance.
The developers are not much aware about the importance of widgets to users and have discounted the annoyance of reorganizing their home screen from scratch since they expected some friction when switching platforms. It is quite a hassle for the long time Android users.
After a month from the launch of Home in April, Facebook understood that this was not approved by users. Slow downloads and almost non-existent sales of the HTC First that comes pre-loaded with Home showed that a terrible launcher was weighing down more popular features like Cover Feed and Chat Heads.
During May, they announced about their work on Dock, a visible tray of your favorite apps that sits on the bottom of your launcher, just like on iOS. After a month time, there came the dock where one can find their email, phone or text messages button.
Today, its been reported that one can drag apps and can place it in a folder to keep the home look tidy.
Facebooks claims to be working on widgets now and are trying to improve NUX. Though it confuses a bit, it is now far better from Home and more traditional versions of Android. Facebook is expecting users to rate their new add—ons.
One will lose, if you have folders or a dock set up on your old version of Android, when you switch to Home. Facebook has to figure out how to improve the personalization features.
Home is appealing to serious social networkers and people who use it should make an unbiased decision about whether they want to organize their world around people or apps.