Comment 113 for bug 604635

(In reply to Jonas Sicking (:sicking) from comment #74)
>
> A different type of use-case that has been discussed is "apps with
> screen-management permission". While I could see having apps which overrode
> how/when/how-much we dim the screen, I don't think this is a urgent
> use-case. I.e. I'd rather not worry about that now. We should certainly
> allow apps to have access to settings, and have settings for how quickly and
> how much we dim the screen, but the actual interacting directly with the
> screen should IMO for now be done just by gaia/gecko.
>
>
> Which brings me to the discussion about rings. The way I look at it gaia and
> gecko should have the same amount of trust. I.e. I would consider gaia+gecko
> to make up the "platform". The platform has system level privileges and is
> trusted to do anything and relied on to do things correctly.
>

IMO I would prefer Gaia to stay a normal web app. This is a really useful sandbox to experiment and draw the gap between what the web can do and can't do.

I have nothing about exposing some privileged interfaces to the homescreen application until we figured out some correct APIs and find time to add it and this is easy to track how many bridges are exposed from the b2g/ chrome app to Gaia.
Also others are doing their own homescreen + set of apps, and that could be helpful to have their opinion/use cases about what is missing.

> Again, long term I think we should allow applications to replace parts of
> the platform. I.e. it'd be cool with applications which can replace the
> status bar, the virtual keyboard, the lock-screen, the "desktop" etc. But I
> don't think we should worry about that for now. iOS doesn't allow any of
> that, and Android allows little, if any, of it.
>

The homescreen is just an app for the moment. And it can be replaced by something else.
On my Android phone I have 2 homescreens - I have a choice between 'Launcher' and 'B2G' when I hit the 'Home' button.