[HN Gopher] Push notifications are now supported cross-browser
___________________________________________________________________
Push notifications are now supported cross-browser
Author : twapi
Score : 235 points
Date : 2023-03-28 09:12 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (web.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (web.dev)
| grose wrote:
| I have been waiting for this for a long time. I run a small forum
| and have maybe 10 core users who use it a lot. It is a recreation
| of a forgotten kind of old forum but with some modern features. I
| would like users to be able to opt-in to push notifications when
| someone replies to their post or when they get a private message.
| I get Patreon support that breaks even for server fees but
| otherwise it is a labor of love. I am currently using a Telegram
| bot to send users pushes but I was always hoping Safari would
| finally relent so I could use the real deal. Thank you, browser
| vendors. I agree with most of the comments here that push
| messages are generally evil but this is a huge boon for small
| niche websites like mine that don't have the resources to make a
| dedicated app.
| distantsounds wrote:
| yes, everything about this. for websites that still use forums
| (yes they are out there!) push notifications for quoted replies
| and direct messages would be extremely helpful. i believe push
| notifications are one of the largest reasons why forums died
| out in days of early smartphones - not having that instant
| feedback of interaction caused their own interactions to
| diminish as well.
|
| the need for dedicated apps on your smart phone is now almost
| unnecessary at this point, unless you're doing something
| extremely niche. what a win.
| noirscape wrote:
| No, forums died because of a two-fold hit - Tapatalk bought
| out exclusivity rights for mobile access on most of the
| bigger forums, then did jack with it and made their phone app
| unusable.
|
| The other death knell was Facebook getting on the phone train
| early, which meant that people moved to FB en-masse (which
| was already happening but got accelerated due to this.)
| focusedone wrote:
| This is the first legitimate excuse I've heard on the entire
| internet for browser push notifications.
| c-hendricks wrote:
| There's been discussion for years over web notifications and
| this is the first you've heard that people like to get
| notified when people respond to them?
| soraminazuki wrote:
| People have been putting up with large amounts of junk
| notifications for years. No one needs to wade through
| discussions to know how they'd feel when they're about to
| receive even more of them.
| afavour wrote:
| I'd love to receive things like "product shipped"
| notifications. I know I can get emails but my inbox is just a
| firehose, would be great to move crap like that out of it.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| I can't recall a time, not even once, when I found pushnotifs in
| a browser useful or even desirable.
|
| Even on my phone I block 99% of them because it's all just noise.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Do you find them useful for apps? Email? Messaging apps?
| Calendar? Taxi apps notifying you when the taxi arrives? All of
| those apps can now be implemented as cross-platform web apps.
| kuschku wrote:
| Do I want those apps to be slow, sluggish, non-native feeling
| web apps?
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Isn't that already the case, only with a thin wrapper to
| handle notifications?
|
| I've seen many apps on iOS that just feel... weird.
| Especially the scroll. It's my understanding that many such
| apps are just web views.
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| Exactly. And if I have alternatives that are native, I
| use those or mostly just do without.
|
| Anyone doing non-native apps on my phone will almost[0]
| never get money from me.
|
| [0] There has to be the occasional exception, I suppose.
| explaininjs wrote:
| Are you referring to web apps where scroll is hijacked by
| JS in some way? Because I don't see how you can get more
| native than the default browser's default scroll
| implementation.
| kuschku wrote:
| The browsers default scroll implementation never feels
| like scrolling in native apps.
| explaininjs wrote:
| Even Safari? It's about as native as you can get. I've
| seen no evidence it uses different scroll logic than
| whatever "native" app. In fact many "native" apps that
| reinvented the wheel in their GUI framework have a
| decidedly worse scroll than many web apps.
| c-hendricks wrote:
| I swear there was an article on the WebKit blog that
| detailed how the scrolling was different, but am not able
| to find it now.
| Tepix wrote:
| Yes, because they will have a harder time tracking you and
| taking control over your phone and its data.
|
| Also web apps are not censored by the app store guidelines.
| criddell wrote:
| Are you seriously arguing that the web does a better job
| of respecting user privacy than desktop and mobile
| operating systems?
| manigandham wrote:
| Yes. Mobile and desktop apps have much more data leakage
| because they can store more data for longer and have much
| more APIs to use. A mobile app provides 100x more
| detailed data with more persistence than a website ever
| could.
|
| This is well understood by the adtech industry and is why
| so many websites push apps in the first place.
| criddell wrote:
| Historically I think you are right but I'm not so sure
| it's still the case.
|
| Do you think an iPhone with the tracking blocker engaged
| is still a richer source of data than the web app on an
| iPhone? Facebook claims that Apple's privacy protections
| cost them $10 billion of revenue the first year.
| manigandham wrote:
| Yes. Apple's changes have reduced tracking in both
| modalities but webapps are far more constricted by Safari
| than native apps.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Yes.
|
| When i close the webpage, that page is gone. It's not
| running in the background silently collecting data. With
| a properly configured browser (a few extensions, no third
| party cookies, or even separate containers), it doesn't
| have much data to gather in the first place.
| anticrymactic wrote:
| Yes that is what he's saying. It's also the truth and the
| only reason every social media forced you to use the app.
| dymk wrote:
| No, that's not why. It's because it's hard to make a
| performant Facebook webapp with all the bells and
| whistles.
| kuschku wrote:
| > Also web apps are not censored by the app store
| guidelines.
|
| Neither is any of the apps on custom F-Droid repos.
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| On my laptop? While I'm working? Hell no. No, no, no, and
| never.
|
| I am a little (just a little) more tolerant on my phone.
| noduerme wrote:
| No, no, no, no, no and also... no.
|
| and before you whine about taxis, it only takes a half second
| to open the app. If you need a ding on your phone you should
| probably walk home.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Calendar is acceptable because I set each and every
| notification.
|
| An taxi app might be acceptable because it has real world
| usage, but I imagine it would be abused pretty heavily with
| "first mile is free if you take a taxi tonight".
|
| Email and messaging apps should not notify me. I will open
| them if/when I have the time and batch process them.
|
| My ability to concentrate is already under enough assult and
| doesn't need to be harmed further, and while I am in favour
| of each person doing what they want, from a societal point of
| view we need way fewer distractions, not more.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Sure. But we all know that even if the only reason it exists
| is because of useful applications that the marketing
| departments will abuse it, because to them 'push' translates
| into 'your undivided attention'. That's why every fifth
| website wants you to enable this - and then good luck if you
| want to disable it again.
| paulmeinshausen wrote:
| I used to think this. Then I learned/realised how
| absolutely crappy the tooling available to those marketing
| departments is. The solution is for push to not be a
| manually run operation, it has to be run entirely by a kind
| of hybrid reinforcement learning system that can
| automatically manage the explore/exploit tradeoff in order
| to learn a person's preferences and then update its
| assessment as those preferences change over time.
| nicoburns wrote:
| The iOS implementation doesn't allow this. You have to add
| the app to your homescreen (i.e. "install" it) to allow it
| to even request permissions. This is actually for web apps.
| [deleted]
| jacquesm wrote:
| > This is actually for web apps.
|
| I'm aware of that. iOS is a proprietary OS and how it
| does things isn't all that relevant to me in this
| context. The web is a different matter and I've yet to
| see a use case of push notifications that served me. But
| I've seen 100's of websites that I have zero reason to
| see as useful applications trying to trick me into
| allowing them to use push notifications.
| nicoburns wrote:
| The context here is that Safari (incl. mobile safari)
| just added support. Every other browser has supported
| this for years. I agree that the implementation in Chrome
| that allows websites to request notification permissions
| on any page load is pretty annoying. But this UI is not a
| necessary part of this feature.
|
| From an android POV, the benefit of this feature is that
| it allows you to install fully featured apps while
| keeping them in the web sandbox where you have fine-
| grained control over permissions.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > I agree that the implementation in Chrome that allows
| websites to request notification permissions on any page
| load is pretty annoying.
|
| FF does pretty much the same thing.
|
| With phone apps I sort of get it: you are already
| installing something and clearly have a long-term
| relationship with the provider of such an app and the app
| likely has functionality that you need badly enough that
| having the app alert you makes sense.
|
| But for me the web is 'transient', even as the maker of a
| SPA I wouldn't dream of bugging my users outside of their
| own decision to come back to the site. All this needy
| software is - to me - just a source of irritation.
| rvense wrote:
| When I last checked a few years ago, self-hosted
| Discourse forums needed to self-publish an app to have
| push notifications on iOS. Hopefully that won't be the
| case anymore, it's a great community communications
| platform.
| vxNsr wrote:
| You can prevent them from asking you by turning off that
| feature in the browser settings. It's the 2nd thing I do
| when I sit down in front of a computer for the first
| time. (First is install ublock-origin).
| 6510 wrote:
| On iphone 1 in 10 000 knows how to do that.
| aequitas wrote:
| And the second a single one of those apps sends me a
| promotional offer via a push notification I disable
| notifications wholesale, negating the entire benefit of this
| 'feature'. I don't want to have to run and maintain a spam
| filter for notifications.
| schwartzworld wrote:
| That's silly. I don't know what kind of phone you have, but
| on my android phone you can specify which types of
| notifications you want to opt out of. It takes like 2
| clicks to opt out of promotional messages but leave
| important notifications active.
| throw-ru-938 wrote:
| Many apps don't bother separating their notifications by
| type.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Same. But there are plenty of apps that don't abuse their
| notification privileges (or allow you to disable the
| marketing notifications separately from the useful ones).
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > I don't want to have to run and maintain a spam filter
| for notifications.
|
| Maybe the OS should run and maintain that for you. Just as
| gmail automatically sorts your emails into different
| categories (and spam), maybe so the OS or the browser
| should sort notifications.
| dymk wrote:
| That would still need enforcement. Google and Apple would
| need to adopt a no-strikes policy and remove apps which
| send a marketing notification to the "your food has
| arrived" notification channel.
| emaginniss wrote:
| No strikes? So kick them off before they even do anything
| wrong?
| dymk wrote:
| One strike means one chance to screw up, zero strikes
| means...
| taejo wrote:
| No. Three strikes means you're out on the third strike,
| not the fourth.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| That's usually when I uninstall these apps myself. Though
| on Android you can usually get the ad spam down by
| disabling it once in my experience.
|
| That being said, it's been years since any apps have tried
| to push promotions onto me through notifications. I
| honestly don't know what app hellscape you and so many
| others online seem to live in; to me, notification ads have
| died a swift death somewhere around 2012.
| bambax wrote:
| > _Do you find them useful for apps? Email?_
|
| No. I can check my email on my own time.
|
| > _Messaging apps?_
|
| Same. I can check my messages when I feel I have time to.
|
| > _Taxi apps notifying you when the taxi arrives?_
|
| Not really. Usually I can see when the taxi is arriving. (I
| almost never call a taxi anyways).
|
| > _Calendar?_
|
| Yes, that's the only case in my opinion when notifications
| are useful, otherwise I tend to forget meetings (not that all
| meetings are useful though).
| schwartzworld wrote:
| > I can check my messages when I feel I have time to.
|
| You don't see any utility in getting alerted when you get a
| text message? Most messaging apps allow you to mute
| threads, so silencing an active group chat is easy, but you
| don't have anybody in your life you want to be able to get
| through to you ASAP?
|
| > Usually I can see when the taxi is arriving. (I almost
| never call a taxi anyways).
|
| Sure, if you're waiting out in front of the building for a
| short time. Sometimes ride-sharing / taxi apps have a long
| wait. Most people appreciate being able to wait indoors,
| instead of sitting on the stoop for 20 minutes waiting for
| your ride to come. This is possible because the app will
| notify you when your driver is getting close enough that
| you should go outside.
| rjh29 wrote:
| Most of the time the app is pushing them on you for engagement
| (youtube: LOOK NEW VIDEO!). But for important chats with
| important people, I sometimes want a notification when they
| send me a message.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| If someone needs to contact me urgently, they should call me.
|
| I never treat text communications as real-time
| communications, and I'm not about to start now.
| dspillett wrote:
| Same here, but we are not everybody and the world needs to
| implement features for people other than us as well as
| those we want.
| saurik wrote:
| Yeah: I largely think phone calls are stupid, have been
| using text communication since I was a kid 30 years ago--
| on BBS systems originally!--and you have no hope of
| reaching me in a timely manner if you call me... but I'm
| not going to use that as a reason to make it harder for
| other people to use phone calls if they want them, even
| if I see no reason for synchronous communication to
| exist: you do you... but you also have to let me do me or
| you frankly don't deserve to be able to do you. "I don't
| find this useful" is only a reason to prevent other
| people from being able to have the feature if you are an
| authoritarian asshole, plain and simple :/. If you don't
| like aspects of feature, you know what? You should get to
| turn it off... and, it turns out, _you can_.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| > on BBS systems originally!
|
| I'll never forget being awoken because someone felt the
| need to page the SysOp at 2 AM on the Compaq laptop
| running my BBS in my closet.
| Tepix wrote:
| With PWA you could have a VoIP service as a web app that
| notifies you if someone uses it to call you.
| naillo wrote:
| I don't even have it for chat. It's insane to me that you'd
| let your attention be stolen away that easily at any given
| moment (don't understand how people get deep hard work done
| when that's a constant risk).
| SquareWheel wrote:
| Pretty much every platform with notifications supports a
| "do not disturb" mode for just such occasions.
| rjh29 wrote:
| It's simple really, it doesn't steal my attention away, I
| can just brush them off. Not everybody is the same.
| andrewaylett wrote:
| You are not me, obviously -- because I _do_ find them useful.
| Not as often as many sites would like me to, but Firefox won 't
| keep interrupting me after the first time I visit a site.
|
| Most of my phone notifications come in silently, and I won't
| tolerate spammy notifications, but I do want notifications for
| low priority/async operations so that I don't need to remember
| to check each app for anything actionable: the SRE book talks
| about "page", "ticket", and "log" messages; a noisy
| notification is a "page", a silent one is a "ticket", and if I
| want to see "log"-type messages then I can check the relevant
| app.
| astura wrote:
| I enable them for chat apps.
| josephg wrote:
| Yeah. I set my web browsers to auto-reject requests to enable
| notifications from web pages. Too many random news sites and
| things ask, and I never want notifications from any of the
| websites I visit. Web notifications are a hard no for me.
| corobo wrote:
| Slack and similar are the only legit use case I can think of
| (much prefer it in a pinned tab than separate app)
| toastal wrote:
| I won't trust these proprietary Electron-based apps outside
| the browser sandbox either.
| TrianguloY wrote:
| I have them for the email pinned tab...but that's basically it.
| Lex-2008 wrote:
| same here: email and chat are allowed, others are blocked.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I found recently you can add your Google account to Windows
| 10/11 and get integration with the calendar and email apps.
| Fairly useful.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I do recall one time. But it was a small software project that
| exclusively benefited me and some friends and family and never
| got released to the general public.
|
| I got flak because it couldn't be run on iOS with
| notifications. But everyone is in front of a computer all the
| time anyway, so they just used a desktop browser.
| tootie wrote:
| My thought would be using it for business software, not
| consumers. Like service desk software or anything that
| currently relies on app notifications or emails. This would be
| simpler.
| shanebellone wrote:
| "I can't recall a time, not even once, when I found pushnotifs
| in a browser useful or even desirable."
|
| Facts! It always feels intrusive. I have them blocked by
| default on mobile and desktop. However, I also have all
| notifications on my phone disabled as well as permanent do not
| disturb mode.
|
| Property should not make demands for attention.
| Yoric wrote:
| If you have an IM application working in the browser, e.g.
| Element/Matrix.
| mhitza wrote:
| For me it'd be useful if most service status pages had the
| option to subscribe to push notifications when a service is
| down.
| mrtksn wrote:
| On desktop, I kind of use reddit and Twitter notifications but
| nothing else.
|
| The problem with notifications is the hyper competitive
| attention market on the web, which pushes the websites
| "optimize" notifications for eyeballs instead of UX.
|
| Web notifications are dead as the web itself. Thankfully, Apple
| sensibly implemented the notifications through requiring the
| website be added on home screen.
|
| Let's see if we end up with websites forcing people save it to
| the homescreen to "read the rest of the article".
|
| As long as the web "content" is a bait and the content is the
| adds there wouldn't anything new on the web. Wast majority of
| the mobile usage is on Android and we haven't seen the golden
| age of mobile web apps, I don't think it will change with Apple
| embracing the notifications.
|
| Could be good for non-kosher apps but the problem with that is
| the centralised nature of push notifications delivery. So if
| they want your web app killed, they can just kill it by not
| providing you the service.
| simonsarris wrote:
| you can turn off these requests for all sites in:
|
| chrome://settings/content/notifications
| [deleted]
| raizer88 wrote:
| The only way this should work is by requesting a user input that
| explicitly comes from the user. No auto-popup. Right now push are
| so abused that I always disable it on every parent/friend/cat
| browser.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I believe this is how it works on iOS. Only apps that have been
| added to the home screen by a user can request notifications.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| And the website should get no indication about the sate of the
| notification settings.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| But then it wouldn't be a "push" notification. It's called
| "push" because the service is "pushing" the notification onto
| the user, the user has no agency in the matter aside from
| straight up blocking/disabling them.
| jwestbury wrote:
| No, it's called push because of push/pull architecture. You
| can subscribe to have notifications pushed, which is a way
| you, as a user, can control the behaviour.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| You essentially repeated what I said, other than implying
| the user had a choice in getting notifications pushed to
| him to start with.
| Jcowell wrote:
| The difference is the Initiation. Push notifications have
| nothing to do with the platform enforcing push upon the
| user. Your comment made it seem like it was.
| SquareWheel wrote:
| Most browser vendors already do, or will soon require a user
| gesture to initiate. That doesn't mean that abuse will
| disappear, but it should help.
|
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Notificatio...
| input_sh wrote:
| This fixes nothing.
|
| Without this: you get a browser popup immediately on page
| load.
|
| With this: you get a popup within the website, which will
| then trigger the browser popup if you miss the tiny (x).
|
| As someone pointed out already, the only possible fix is for
| websites to somehow not know whether you've enabled them or
| not.
| brycedriesenga wrote:
| At least within the website, we'll likely be able to use
| Ublock Origin, etc. to block a lot of 'em
| kroltan wrote:
| Yep, classic issue of usability vs abuse.
|
| To solve abuse, the browser could pretend to comply by not
| returning error codes but doing nothing for the user.
|
| However this would mean that websites with a legitimate use
| for the feature (say, an email client or whatever) would
| have degraded usability, kind of how Mac apps have to tell
| you to go to the system settings and allow them certain
| permissions.
| sberder wrote:
| There's definitely a valid use case when building PWA apps. The
| problem in previous versions was the impossibility to change the
| notification service, it is now possible through the
| `PushManager`.
| bearmode wrote:
| No, thank you
| bedane wrote:
| Thanks for contributing to making the web a worse place, little
| by little, brick by brick. It's still barely usable but I trust
| that one day you and your peers will manage to make it unusable
| at all.
| MacroChip wrote:
| In my experience, web push notifications on Android do not show
| immediately (i.e. with high priority). They only show when your
| phone wakes. Does anyone know of a workaround for this?
| ar9av wrote:
| Apple supports them now. Everyone else has been doing it for
| years.
| vhiremath4 wrote:
| Am I the only one who has basically disabled all notifications at
| this point? Even if I turned them on for a select few apps I
| would actually potentially want them for (Slack, email,
| Instagram), there is so much noise in those apps and I can't
| differentiate between what I actually want:
|
| "send me Slack notifications if it seems urgent from my boss or
| team"
|
| "send me email notifications if it's from a top enterprise
| customer"
|
| "send me Instagram DMs only if it's from someone I'm interested
| in dating"
|
| ^ These are the kinds of notifications I would want to hit the
| push threshold but there's no way to do that. Maybe a useful
| application of LLMs?
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I disabled all notifications but I selectively enabled them on
| some websites. For example I don't want to install discord or
| telegram apps, because they live in my browser just fine. But I
| can't really use them without notifications, that's essential
| feature. Right now I'm talking about desktop, but I'll be very
| happy to purge them from my iPhone.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Discord is interesting to see because I find the app
| experience way better. I just silence notifications/no
| push/no banner everything. I have to be tagged directly for
| it to alert me
| kibwen wrote:
| _> But I can 't really use them without notifications, that's
| essential feature._
|
| I use Discord extensively and exclusively within the browser,
| and I have push notifications disabled. I just keep it in a
| pinned tab, and whenever I have a notification it just puts a
| little red dot on the Discord tab's icon. I do aggressively
| mute channels and servers to keep it manageable, though.
| daniel-thompson wrote:
| I've turned all notifications (os, app, browser) off on all
| devices. They're just too distracting. It also helps me be more
| purposeful about how I interact with the machine.
| danaris wrote:
| Two of these don't need any machine learning; they just needs
| more information to be encoded in the notifications, and more
| comprehensive filtering to be built into the notification
| subsystem. Your second and third conditions just require the
| ability to build contact groups that get higher priority for
| notifications (and, of course, an indication within the
| notification of who the sender is).
|
| The "urgent" part of the first is obviously somewhat more
| complicated, but the "from my boss or team" is also just a
| contact group. I don't use Slack, so I am unfamiliar with its
| specific capabilities, but if it gave the ability to mark a
| message as "urgent", that could be transferred through to the
| notification, and allow additional filtering on it.
| Alternatively, I suspect that it already allows (for whatever
| the Slack equivalent of the "server owner" is) for the creation
| of arbitrary channels; if your team created an "urgent issues"
| channel, the channel information could easily be encoded into
| notification metadata to allow filtering on.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I've left a few in banner mode, but nothing is configured to be
| intrusive. Only messages from my wife vibrate. Most apps aren't
| even allows banners. But my philosophy is if it's an emergency
| use a synchronous mode like calling me. If it's not, I'll tend
| to it as I can. For better or worse I check my phone often
| enough that asynchronous modes like messages or email or
| whatever get processed in short enough order.
|
| Focus modes in iOS are helpful but I just found there's no time
| when I need everything vibrating to tell me random information
| that I could poll.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Am I the only one who has basically disabled all
| notifications at this point
|
| Nope. I disable all notifications as well. The small handful of
| somewhat useful ones aren't worth the annoying and distracting
| cascade of completely worthless ones.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Nope, I have very few notifications allowed on my personal
| devices. Basically Messages/SMS and phone. And those are set to
| vibrate/visual, no sound.
|
| Work laptop also has email and Slack visuals, no sound.
|
| And I use Focus/Sleep to eliminate all (except
| wife/kid/parents) notifications from 9pm to 7am.
|
| Edit - I can think of only 2-3 apps that send push
| notifications and they're mostly fitness related. The
| notifications are generally of the type "your workout was
| synced" and the only reason I leave these up is I use 3-4 apps
| and when they don't sync, I want to manually force a re-sync.
| None send random "we've updated a thing!" messages (and if they
| did, I disable the notifications).
|
| I absolutely do NOT want random, unscheduled notifications that
| aren't directly related to something I did/am doing.
| dymk wrote:
| I don't understand how it's acceptable for apps like Uber or
| DoorDash to deliver to me an unprompted ad, pushed into my
| notifications center. It's always something like "10% off
| your order for the next day!" or "Try this new pass thing!".
|
| Firstly, that's a guaranteed way for me to disable all
| notifications from the app, if not uninstall it. Secondly,
| how is that not a violation of some sort of Apple Developer
| Guideline? I wish they'd crack down on that sort of thing.
| aendruk wrote:
| Absolutely unacceptable. Apps that abuse notifications to
| run ads get a one-star review and uninstalled. Lyft, Gig,
| Lime, Instagram, Migraine Buddy--dead to me.
|
| And simply revoking permissions isn't a solution; the core
| problem is that the app _would even try_ to abuse its
| privileges. Imagine being content with someone trying to
| come though your door just because you've turned the
| deadbolt. Their behavior is still unacceptable.
| csomar wrote:
| One way I filter emails is by having multiple folders. I only
| get notified for the Inbox folder. Most other emails are
| filtered by title or email. I also hit the spam button too
| much, so I rarely get a bad notification.
| accrual wrote:
| Notifications are the bane of my existence. Every app, desktop,
| mobile, website, professional tool, doesn't matter. They ALL
| have some kind of prompt. Ad, yes/no, another yes/no, are you
| sure, some pop-up, hey can I have your email, hey look over
| here, hey my setInterval() ran out. I feel like I live in a
| jungle of pop-ups and I, the user with a digital machete, must
| cut my way towards my computing goal.
| SN76477 wrote:
| Its become a noisy world.
| paulmeinshausen wrote:
| The thing is, technology (including apps and websites), is
| supposed to help its users. If you want to make room for
| something in your life (running or any form of exercise, or
| films, or news, or a particular genre of shopping/retail, etc,
| etc), then you're also theoretically open to the technology
| helping you attend to the topic/problem at the frequency/rate and
| depth that is helpful for you.
|
| The problem is that messaging/notifications don't do that 99% of
| the time. But not because they can't in theory. It's because the
| tooling for that technology (i.e. CRM platforms like Braze,
| OneSignal, CleverTap, MoEngage, Salesforce Marketing Cloud,
| Iterable, etc) don't make it possible for the app/website (the
| operators who manage the channel).
|
| Lifecycle notifications and CRM are primarily designed as rule-
| based systems and they're manually managed. The result is Crap.
| Crap copy, crap timing, crap delivery.
|
| That's why my cofounders and I started Aampe (www.aampe.com)- to
| make messaging actually useful for people.
|
| I wrote a blog post about this in the context of food delivery
| notifications here: https://www.aampe.com/blog/aampe-for-food-
| delivery-app-notif...
|
| And here are 2 videos about the infrastructure necessary to make
| notifications work at a user-level, at scale.
|
| "Segmentation comes after messaging - not before"
| https://youtu.be/SBE0FpWbgyA
|
| "A User Story" https://youtu.be/bFsnB6Thneo
| jlaurain wrote:
| True. Most of the issue comes from a "One size fits none"
| approach.
|
| When companies just treat push notifications as a way to blast
| ads to users, it all goes awry.
|
| If companies treat push notifications (and other messaging) as
| a feature of the product, the whole product experience
| improves.
|
| Nobody complains when their alarm screen pops up or their timer
| goes off...because we want those things and it necessitates a
| "pop up" of sorts.
|
| Similarly, people appreciate when a learning app pops up with a
| helpful tip relevant to what we're trying to learn or a
| meditation app pops up with a reminder to take a second to
| yourself and breathe correctly.
|
| It's seldom the vehicle that's the issue. They're just methods.
|
| It's all about how they're used.
| npteljes wrote:
| >technology is supposed to help its users
|
| Now that's a huge misconception.
|
| It isn't in technology's nature to take sides, and it's also
| not regulated to do that, and neither do technologists have a
| universal moral stance that would support that.
|
| So in the end, technology serves whomever happens to control
| it, and circling back to notifications, currently service
| providers seem to have the biggest say in how many
| notifications go around.
| schaunwheeler wrote:
| It's in _people 's_ nature to take sides, and, as you pointed
| out, technology serves whomever happens to control it. So
| people who control technology should use it to try to help
| other people. I realize it doesn't often work out that way,
| but I see no reason to give up on the ideal. In the end, it's
| in the interest of those who control the technology to make
| the end-users happy. If everyone actually turned off all push
| notifications, companies that send push notifications would
| have a useless channel. It's not in their interest to spam
| people, and from personal experiences I can say that I think
| most of them know that. The tool set for sending smart
| notifications has just been incredibly limiting until
| recently.
| [deleted]
| atum47 wrote:
| I've been using push notifications for a while now. They can be
| very useful. I have a back end that send server events (PHP SSE)
| to my web app everytime a new there's a new entry on a DB, which
| triggers a push notification. That's how I did my sensor of
| presence [1]
|
| 1 - https://youtu.be/D4wimodtpKk
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| The first thing I do on any browser is to completely disable
| notifications, on PC and mobile both. There are zero legitimate
| use cases for this. If you need notifications, install an app.
| pedrogpimenta wrote:
| Why an app? An app has much more control over your phone
| without your knowledge. And this is also about desktop
| browsers, where there's less apps.
|
| I loathe notifications and turn 99% of them off, but there are
| use cases for this and I'm glad that Apple has finally caved in
| to better support web apps and not only their walled garden.
| illiarian wrote:
| > An app has much more control over your phone without your
| knowledge.
|
| On iOS it doesn't. Apps are heavily sandboxed and most
| interactions outside the app require explicit user
| permission.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I have enabled notifications for only 2 things: outlook webmail
| and Microsoft Teams on my professional laptop (Linux user). I
| don't need those to be applications (teams app is a website
| anyway).
|
| I am glad the option exist and I am also happy I can choose to
| ignore that option for 99.99% of the websites I visit.
|
| Bottom line: choice is good as long as it is opt-in and not
| opt-out.
| suddenclarity wrote:
| Why should every site be an app wrapper just to be able to
| notify you? The abuse is a serious problem that needs to be
| solved but I don't see more apps being the solution.
| pzo wrote:
| in the articles author says:
|
| > Safari for iOS and iPadOS supports push notifications as of
| version 16.4, but only for apps that were added to the Home
| Screen. Apple calls these Home Screen web apps
|
| This should be a good enough way to prevent abuse
| pzo wrote:
| on desktop they are maybe not that useful but for mobile they
| can be occasionally useful:
|
| - ordering some food or pizza when you are just for short time
| in different city / country - I don't want to install some
| dedicated app that I won't use anymore in a week or two.
|
| - renting e-scooter when on vacation - again each country
| usually has different such e-bike providers.
|
| - local taxi app - uber / gojek /grab is not in every country
| progbits wrote:
| > This web feature is now available in all three browser engines!
|
| I guess for practical purposes this is correct, but they should
| at least say "all major browser engines". There are others...
| cbeach wrote:
| I assume every service worker is constantly polling a server
| back-end, or, at least, has a long-running connection?
|
| There are hundreds of service workers installed for me in Chrome
| (see: chrome://serviceworker-internals/)
|
| I recall on iOS, Apple's infrastructure aggregates push
| notifications on the server-side, meaning an iPhone only has to
| maintain a connection to a single server for all push
| notifications.
|
| Are there any similar initiatives for the Push API? Or is it
| simply not a priority, given the looser bandwidth/CPU constraints
| on desktop computers?
| gsnedders wrote:
| This isn't how it works at all; a server sends a message to a
| push service which then delivers it to the user agent. It is
| only once the user agent receives the message that it needs to
| start an installed service worker (if it isn't already running)
| to deliver the message in the form of the notification.
| (There's some interest in making it possible to send a
| notification directly via the push service without having the
| cost of starting a service worker, but that's future work.)
|
| In the Safari case, this push service is essentially the same
| as is used for native apps, and it will do the same aggregation
| as you see for other notification types.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > These messages can be used to alert the user of new content or
| updates, remind them of upcoming events or deadlines, or provide
| other important information.
|
| Or even information that's not important, I guess.
|
| If a website has an update, well, sure they can "push" it; but
| why don't they just push it to their production server? It's
| obviously driven by the demands of advertisers, and any site that
| succeeds in pushing notifications my way is a site I won't be
| visiting again.
| seydor wrote:
| It's a pity that the notification popups exist, they ruined
| notifications making them dead on arrival. It should be a browser
| setting UI somewhere so only motivated users can enable them.
| They can be useful. They should be an alternative to RSS. And
| they could remove a lot of bloat from app stores -- so many apps
| exist solely to capture the notifications channel
| noduerme wrote:
| Great, right when this stopped being a commercial goal because we
| explained to the execs that we couldn't do it .
|
| What a wonderful feature.
|
| I'm gonna just quit and tell the boss to have GPT write the
| fuckin code for this. I'm sure that'll work.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I wish browsers would have some kind of reputation system for
| push notifications.
|
| If most other users find push messages from a site useful, then
| allow them. Otherwise, don't. Eg. Messages from ebay that say
| 'you won the auction, please pay now' might have the majority of
| users wanting.
|
| Whereas messages from engadget letting you know that there are
| 112 new trending articles might see a far lower user interaction
| rate.
|
| I would like the browser to have a setting "only allow push
| notifications from sites that the majority of other users
| interact with".
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Chrome implements something like that.
|
| If you want such an experience, just deny notifications by
| default (it's a browser setting) and click the little icon in
| the address bar if you run into a site that you do want
| notifications from if ghee prompt doesn't show up.
| paulmeinshausen wrote:
| It can be so much better than this. It doesn't have to be an
| average of most other users. It's perfectly feasible to run
| user-level optimisation that runs by modeling user preferences
| and propensities to respond and then letting those models
| manage the notifications. That's what we've built at
| www.aampe.com
| noirscape wrote:
| Annoying fact is that every major browser silently installs
| itself into the startup process when you enable any browser push
| notification on Windows (with Edge being enabled for this by
| default iirc).
|
| If you're wondering why your only 2-year old Laptop is slowing
| down when you boot it up - this is why. Chances are that Edge,
| Firefox and/or Chrome all three decided that they should have the
| right to run a full instance of themselves when you boot up your
| PC because you enabled a notification for a site that doesn't
| ever send any to begin with.
|
| Browsers are heavy things to boot up (not to mention that in
| potato RAM environments, they eat through RAM like there's no
| tomorrow). To be clear, browsers being heavy applications is
| fine, it's one application where people tolerate it because of
| how versatile the browser is, but it is _extremely_ frustrating
| when it results in the computer taking 5 minutes to sign in, when
| all they needed to do was quickly revise a Word document.
|
| The result is that people end up writing off perfectly
| serviceable laptops for something that is easily disabled in the
| task manager.
|
| This sorta thing really should get a big warning popup that if
| you enable it, it probably will end up slowing down your PC. I
| can't exactly celebrate the fact that all three major browser
| engines now pester users into slowing down their PCs.
|
| Otherwise, if your relatives/friends are complaining their laptop
| is slow (and you're the designated IT person), enjoy the free
| advice.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| In the same vein, I feel like persistent web workers need to be
| surfaced to the user more visibly than they are now, perhaps as
| a primary settings tab or something, and with periodic clean-up
| prompts from the browser ("foo.xyz has been running in the
| background for Y days without being used, would you like to
| stop it?") because it seems to me that as things are currently
| at up, they're gonna pile up indefinitely since there is no
| management to speak of. It also just seems kinda nutty that
| something that started running without my explicit permission
| can just hang around however long it wants to.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| What do I disable in the startup? I could not find anything
| mentioning Edge, firefox or chrome.
| mavhc wrote:
| Why are you booting your laptop so often? Surely once a month
| or so to install updates is enough
| noirscape wrote:
| Non-technical people turn their laptop off when they're not
| using it, because it eats up power and they often don't have
| the willingness to burn electricity bills on a device they
| don't fully understand how to use.
|
| This isn't about me, this is about regular computer users,
| who make up by _far_ the biggest crowd of people.
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| I generally turn things off when I'm not using them. Don't
| you?
| cbeach wrote:
| This is only a Windows problem. I never need to reboot my Mac
| unless there's a major OS update.
| zagrebian wrote:
| > every major browser silently installs itself into the startup
| process when you enable any browser push notification on
| Windows
|
| Don't they already do that for automatic background updates
| anyway?
| easton wrote:
| Yes, but usually they have a smaller updater instead of the
| entire browser always having to run in the background.
| Guessing that's what OP is complaining about.
| zagrebian wrote:
| The entire browser shouldn't have to run in the background
| just to receive push messages. If a browser really does
| that, that's pretty bad.
| noirscape wrote:
| Firefox doesn't, they do this when you boot up the browser
| (always fun to boot up a computer that's been sitting unused
| for a few months and seeing the updater for a few seconds).
|
| Chrome iirc has two update mechanisms, the first being Google
| Update which is a different application that isn't as
| resource heavy (and is also used to update applications like
| Google Earth) and the second being similar to the Firefox
| update mechanism, but it instead happens in the background
| while you're using the browser (with an orange exclamation
| mark when the update is ready to be installed to inform you
| that the browser needs to be restarted).
|
| Safari updates always have been tied to updates to macOS/iOS,
| with all the benefits and issues that entails (no automatic
| updates whatsoever outside of OS updates).
| scarface74 wrote:
| Safari updates are not tied to OS updates on the Mac
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The Chrome update detector mechanism also does another
| "fun" thing: it prevents use of your camera (and probably
| mic too) if it sees an update is available. But,
| _obviously_ , it doesn't tell you that this is why your
| camera isn't working.
|
| So, if you are trying to join an interview or exam and your
| camera and/or mic aren't working, check if you happen to
| have a small orange excalamtion point somewhere in your
| Chrome UI, chances are that's the reason.
| 14u2c wrote:
| This is quite interesting actually. I wonder if Google
| has been burnt by a zero-day allowing audio / video
| extraction in the past.
| cj wrote:
| Not sure how widespread this is. I regularly screenshare
| with people and about 40% of the time the other person's
| Chrome browser has a big red or yellow Update Now button
| in the nav. No audio or video problems.
| [deleted]
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| This is a Windows problem. I can cold boot and have Firefox up
| in 30 seconds in Linux.
| explaininjs wrote:
| An HTML renderer, in only 90,000,000,000 clock cycles? Verily
| I say, technology has come a long way.
| ingonealan3 wrote:
| Oh shush, and just go type "lynx" into your beloved green
| glowing terminal /jk
| bloopernova wrote:
| It's not _just_ an HTML rendering engine. Heck, even a
| rendering engine is very complex these days.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Be ware that cold booting isn't actually cold booting
| anymore, but more like the suspend feature of old. You need
| to restart the computer (or pull the plug) to shut it down
| for real.
|
| It's part of why laptops can't hold a charge anymore.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| I have a desktop with no swap configured. It can only cold
| boot when off. There is no way to hibernate, suspend, or
| whatever. Shutdown and long pressing the power button kills
| everything.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| That's kinda scary. Linux assumes you have swap. If you
| do not, you may OOM with significant free memory because
| it needs it when swapping pages. Granted, not super
| common in a desktop setting, but still. Like a 64 Mb swap
| file is all you need to avoid this.
| cesarb wrote:
| > Be ware that cold booting isn't actually cold booting
| anymore, but more like the suspend feature of old. You need
| to restart the computer (or pull the plug) to shut it down
| for real.
|
| Not on Linux, which is what the parent poster is using.
| This "shut down means hibernate, you have to press restart
| to actually shut down" behavior is a Windows-only novelty.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Although you can configure Linux to do this, if you're
| feeling masochistic.
| asah wrote:
| +1 - I reboot my Mac once a quarter.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Why are people even rebooting?
|
| The only time my windows computer reboots is when the power
| goes out.
|
| (Also, I highly recommend staying away from windows,
| Microsoft is getting incredibly intrusive. If my work
| didn't use windows exclusively, I'd be on linux)
| Sargos wrote:
| I hope you live in Buenos Aires where the power goes out
| weekly or else you are running a very insecure computer
| and are a threat to everyone around you. Unfortunately
| users like yourself forced Microsoft to require restarts
| for security updates which make the world a better place
| but really piss off the non-technical people.
| pas wrote:
| Windows updates! Security updates every month. (Second
| Tuesday of each month.) It's lovely. Last time I checked
| the patch notes. Okay, nothing that affects me. Two days
| later I found my computer rebooted without any nagging or
| warning beforehand :|
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patch_Tuesday
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I can cold boot and have Firefox up in 30 seconds in Linux.
|
| You're lucky. That's not my experience at all. I stopped
| using Firefox in part because it's the only browser that
| takes more than 2 minutes to start up on my Linux boxes.
| soraminazuki wrote:
| Lucky? All of my computers can launch Firefox within
| seconds, not minutes. That includes one from more than a
| decade ago. Have you installed Firefox on a spinning hard
| drive instead of an SSD?
| JohnFen wrote:
| I say you're lucky because I'm jealous. I wish FF worked
| as well for me. It used to, but something changed a
| couple of years back that broke it.
|
| It's true that I don't use SSDs. It's also true that no
| other app (including other browsers) takes such an
| absurdly long time to start up, so I don't think the lack
| of an SSD is the issue.
|
| Or, if it is, that means there's a larger problem with
| Firefox. You shouldn't have to run special hardware to
| run a browser.
| simula67 wrote:
| Isn't 30 seconds a lot of time just to start a browser?
| [deleted]
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The first 26 is the OS getting to the desktop.
| Karellen wrote:
| ...of which 20 seconds is typing in the LUKS passphrase
| user432678 wrote:
| I like the consistency though, had the same start up time
| on my Pentium III and Firefox 1.6 nearly 20 years ago /s
| smolder wrote:
| They said: "cold boot and start the browser." That's two
| things, not just starting the browser.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Frequently you find people complaining about browser
| performance have multiple extensions involved and they are
| suffering from "pluginitis".
|
| Pluginitis sufferers, however, have very little insight
| into their condition and frequently react violently when
| you tell them that your browser starts in just a few
| seconds.
|
| Back in 1999 my relatives were browsing the web over dialup
| with 640x480 screens and frequently had more than 50% of
| the vertical screen area consumer by window chrome, browser
| buttons, and toolbar after toolbar installed by multiple
| (now forgotten) web sites such as Yahoo, Lycos, Hotmail,
| AOL, CNET, etc.... Oddly none of these people saw anything
| wrong with this.
| goodpoint wrote:
| No no no. If a plugin that blocks cookies and stuff like
| that manages to slow down a browser it means there's a
| big design error in that browser.
| noirscape wrote:
| This has nothing to do with plugins. This is on browsers
| whose only installed extension is uBlock Origin. I'd
| hardly consider that pluginitis, since browsing the
| internet without an adblocker is tantamount to asking for
| malware these days.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| uBlock Origin is a counterexample. It's the only or very
| close to only browser extension that I think anyone
| should install.
| noirscape wrote:
| They don't do this on Linux because there's no unified way to
| do it on Linux. It also happens on macOS if memory serves me
| right, but macOS makes it aggravating enough for people to
| usually disable it because of that (you can't do a silent
| application launch when logging in on macOS from what I can
| tell - sole exception being iTunesHelper on older versions -
| so any browser that sends push notifications opens a new
| window when you login to the computer, making it obvious and
| annoying).
| TheCoreh wrote:
| > you can't do a silent application launch when logging in
| on macOS from what I can tell - sole exception being
| iTunesHelper on older versions
|
| You absolutely can, there's ways for apps to launch without
| adding a dock icon or windows, this is typically done by
| menu bar apps, but can also be done by daemon-style
| services, or by apps meant to do global-style UIs (like a
| lot of the spotlight replacement apps)
| jeroenhd wrote:
| There's no unified way to do it in Linux if you target
| people running bespoke i3 configs or dedicated environments
| (such as the Steam Deck game UI; the KDE environment will
| just work, obviously). With GNOME, KDE, and Mate, LXDE, and
| probably every other normal desktop environment, you can
| use XDG autostart to launch programs on login
| (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Autostart).
|
| Even still, there are quick and easy configuration files
| available online for software like i3
| (https://github.com/minad/i3-config/blob/master/autostart)
| to make them compatible with normal Linux setups.
|
| I don't know why Linux versions of browsers don't do this,
| but it certainly isn't a technical limitation.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I don't know why Linux versions of browsers don't do
| this, but it certainly isn't a technical limitation.
|
| Shh! Don't tell them! They might start doing it.
| anonyfox wrote:
| From the business side, all cases I remember why management
| decided to have some "native app" (even if its just a wrapped web
| app), is because they REALLY want notifications. (ignoring for a
| moment most users don't want them :-) )
|
| So, does wthis mean we finally have the moment in time where PWAs
| start to be the best default choice instead of an appstore-app? I
| would appeciate that!
|
| Too bad we're entering a time right now where the concept of
| "frontend engineering" evaporates in favor of Chat-UX :/
| quyleanh wrote:
| With more and more update recently, it's seems that Apple doesn't
| want to get another EU compliance rule of default browser?
| ammmir wrote:
| I never enable push notifications for any websites I visit, but I
| think, as a developer, it would be interesting to easily add push
| notifications for internal apps. i.e., stuff that one would use a
| Slack hook for, I'd rather have a homescreen web "app" that can
| send pushes natively (albeit via a third-party push broker)
| rather than having to either build your own native app or use a
| messaging platform.
| weatherlight wrote:
| This is a step in the right direction.
|
| Now that they are standardized across all modern browsers,
| standards around their governance will follow.
| tonetheman wrote:
| [dead]
| jmull wrote:
| > Push messages can be particularly useful for applications that
| need to deliver timely, relevant information to their users, such
| as news or sports apps, or for e-commerce websites that want to
| send users notifications about special offers or sales.
|
| Sure, they have their uses... but web sites will send far more
| notifications than anyone wants to receive. People would enjoy a
| drinking fountain but get a fire hose.
|
| I don't even think about it. I just click "no" (and curse under
| my breath for even making me do that) and move on.
| paulmeinshausen wrote:
| [flagged]
| aerzen wrote:
| I dont consider my phone to be out of date, but this website
| you linked is way too much for it. Laggy, takes 10sec to load
| and then asks for cookies before I even see what it is about.
|
| Nope.
| robby_w_g wrote:
| > timing/frequency optimisation
|
| Or in other words, how to spam people as much as possible
| without them disabling notifications in frustration.
| haspok wrote:
| > Aampe adds AI and ML optimization to your existing
| marketing stack, so you can send better messages in hours,
| not months.
|
| Nice try, buddy.
|
| It is not a "tooling problem", it is a GTF-off-my-lawn
| problem.
| paulmeinshausen wrote:
| And ML can help recognise users who feel that way and "get
| off their lawn" faster. It's absolutely a tooling problem.
| throw-ru-938 wrote:
| A better idea would be getting of _everyone 's_ lawn --
| no ML required.
| haspok wrote:
| You are overcomplicating it. User turns off notifications
| permanently (in Firefox, the setting is called "Block new
| requests asking to allow notifications"), problem solved.
| No tooling needed!
| iza wrote:
| You can deny push notifications by default in your browser
| settings and never be prompted again. They can still be
| manually allowed on the sites where you actually want them.
| Same goes for location requests and other "site settings".
| warner25 wrote:
| Whenever I get prompted to allow them from a website, my
| immediate thought is "why would they ever think I'd want this?"
| brycedriesenga wrote:
| They might know you probably won't want it, but they're
| hoping you'll click yes or accept without thinking, haha
| warner25 wrote:
| I suspect that this is the real answer.
| twism wrote:
| Not all web apps spam notifications. I think we are all
| thinking of notifications in the context of what typical
| websites typically do but this is all dependent on what the
| web app/developer does (eg. if HN had a push notifications,
| wouldn't it be nice to know when you receive a reply to your
| comment? ... plus a "Notifications Settings" page to set what
| type of notifications HN can send, notifications about a
| certain topic or domain on the front page, etc?)
|
| Uber Eats and Drizzly spam my notifications (I know Android
| has very detailed/overly complex IMO way of managing app
| notification channels) but because they are native apps we
| don't complain.
| twism wrote:
| HNNotify.io (YC S23) anyone?
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I would NOT want to get a notification if somebody replied
| to my comment on HN. I want a small, unoptrusive icon on HN
| that shows the exact number of replies that I haven't read
| and that I can click on when I have time.
|
| There is far too much already that bings, bangs, jumps and
| try to get my attention.
| brycedriesenga wrote:
| I love how detailed the notification management on Android
| can be
| JohnFen wrote:
| > if HN had a push notifications, wouldn't it be nice to
| know when you receive a reply to your comment?
|
| Not via a push notification, no.
| twism wrote:
| via what then?
| warner25 wrote:
| There are _very_ few websites that I love and might trust
| to not abuse notifications, and HN is probably one of
| them. Still, I only want an inbox or page showing unread
| messages that I can check at my own initiative rather
| than something that will pop-up or otherwise try to get
| my attention when I 'm clearly choosing to look at or do
| something else. Only my wife and maybe my boss should be
| able to do that.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Email would be my preference. That way, I can have it be
| autosorted and let my email client do any special
| processing I want, including notifications if that's
| desirable.
| Terretta wrote:
| To be fair, focus mode now semi-effectively "autosorts"
| with preferred handling per cell in a matrix of source x
| modality.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I had to search for "focus mode" to learn what you were
| referring to, so forgive me if my understanding is
| incorrect. Isn't that a Win 11 thing? It looks like a
| kind of do-not-disturb mode?
|
| How does that intersect with browser push notifications?
| Another advantage of email notifications is that the
| email notifications won't go away if I don't pay
| attention to them for a long while.
|
| In any case, I don't use Windows except at work, where
| this wouldn't be an issue anyway.
| jmull wrote:
| > Not all web apps spam notifications
|
| Yes. I'll bet there are many well-behaved web apps, with
| well-considered notifications and concise and simple
| options so that users get everything they want and little
| they don't.
|
| They are downed out by the firehose too.
| twism wrote:
| firehose? as in other websites the user has allowed
| notifications for that are "bad" actors?
| afavour wrote:
| I've never understood why the push notification permission
| doesn't require a click to activate. Many other intrusive
| things (e.g. playing a video) do. Google have even gone down a
| long winded path of disabling the prompt for sites that have
| low acceptances rates which seems like a very over complicated
| solution.
|
| Allowing it on page load has totally soured users on what could
| be a really useful tool. Sometimes I absolutely would like to
| receive notifications from a service without having to install
| an entire native app for it. Unfortunately that's counter to
| the way Apple have implemented web push, requiring a Home
| Screen install before you're able to use it.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| I feel like Firefox has done a good job moving the prompt to
| an unobtrusive part of the address bar and only really
| drawing attention to it after an interaction on a page
| occurred.
|
| My impression is that Edge is just like iOS requiring you to
| "pin" a site somewhere (to bookmarks, to the start menu, to
| the desktop, to the taskbar, whatever) before prompting for
| notifications.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| On iOS push notifications are gated behind Web Clips[0]. You
| can only ask for notification permissions if the user has
| pinned your webapp to the homescreen. This seems like a
| perfect way to deal with all the spammy notification asks.
|
| [0] What iOS calls a "progressive web app"
| afavour wrote:
| To me it's not ideal. I can imagine wanting a notification
| from an app I don't want to install to my home screen and I
| wish it were possible.
| joshxyz wrote:
| more like people want some eye drops of notifications, they get
| niagara falls.
|
| everyone is competing for your attention.
| schaunwheeler wrote:
| Lot of strong feelings here about push notifications :) I think
| it's worth pointing out that (1) there are many people out there
| who find push notifications useful or even desirable, and (2)
| push notifications don't need to suck. Most push notification are
| annoying nudges because tools that allow companies to send
| notifications only allow mindless mass blasts with maybe a bit of
| only-slightly-less-mindless segmentation scattered in. There are
| better ways to do it. I'm helping build one of those ways
| (aampe.com), but my point is that we should distinguish between
| the current state of the technology and the potential of the
| technology to meet a valid need.
| guitarbill wrote:
| Lots of people find email "useful or even desirable". Same with
| SMS, phone calls, mail/letters.
|
| All have been abused by "marketing" to the point where they
| almost became or become useless. In some cases, workarounds
| were found so we can continue living our lives without
| spammers.
|
| I suppose it's inevitable that push notifications are no
| different. But the argument is still unconvincing.
| schaunwheeler wrote:
| Why should we assume that the way SMS, phones, mail,
| notifications and other channels have been handled in the
| past is the way they must always be handled? I work with a
| lot of those marketers. It's not like they're sitting in
| front of Braze in a black top-hat, twirling a curly mustache
| with their fingers, and saying "heh heh heh, how I can annoy
| all of my users _today_? " They _hate_ that there isn 't a
| better way to reach people. There are better ways - I know
| because I'm building one of them and can see how it reaches
| people when they want, about what they want, and as
| frequently as they want, and how the engagement and purchase
| rates are _way_ higher for those individualized messages than
| they are for dumb blast messages.
|
| It's not inevitable that a tool with a glaring technical flaw
| must always have that technical flaw. Technical flaws can be
| fixed.
| RugnirViking wrote:
| > Most push notification are annoying nudges because tools that
| allow companies to send notifications only allow mindless mass
| blasts
|
| How hard is it to accept that for a lot of this stuff, there is
| literally nobody that wants to recieve it. It's fly-tipping
| your junk into millions of people's gardens in the hope that
| 0.001% of them see it and it reminds them of something they had
| meant to do already... The tech you are talking about almost
| certainly raises this to an amazing 0.0012%, by the looks of it
| it primarily does this by changing around the composition of
| the trash heap occasionally.
|
| Until you invent telepathy, you will never be able to know who
| those vanishingly few people where recieving useless junk would
| remind them of something are
| schaunwheeler wrote:
| It feels like you're assuming a traditional marketing
| approach to "blasting" messages and hoping they stick. That's
| how most marketing tools work, but it's not how all marketing
| tools work, and I think it's a mistake to treat an
| implementation flaw as an indicator that a technology isn't
| actually desirable. It's not desirable in its current form.
| That doesn't mean it has to stay that way.
| dathinab wrote:
| Nice, I do like it it had show quite useful for certain use
| cases.
|
| Pro:
|
| - notifications without needing a account (and e.g. giving them
| your mail)
|
| - notifications when you use a web app (e.g. mail), I just don't
| want to install a app for quite a bunch of things, best it also
| works in situations where you simply can't install an app (e.g.
| company computer)
|
| - less persistent/annoying then mail notifcation (through depends
| a bit on your OS notification manager)
|
| Cons:
|
| - less reliable
|
| - less persistent then mail notification
|
| - some sites try to push them on users, but then it's a pretty
| good indicator for which site not to use
|
| Os/User Specific:
|
| - I have seen cases where Windows displayed them quite intrusive
| and it was non obvious where they where coming from making it
| hard to disable them for a non tech versatile user.
|
| Especially when it came to web mail clients, web messenger
| clients and some simple entertainment sites they have shown quite
| useful to me while the sites I visit normally don't try to push
| them onto users in an annoying way.
| agentdrtran wrote:
| also pro: notifications on iOS for things that won't pass
| apple's walled garden
| hartator wrote:
| How is that good? New ways to spam us?
| berdon wrote:
| This is a major deal for progressive web apps (PWAs) replacing
| native mobile development. Most native mobile apps have been able
| to be replaced by a PWA for at least the last 5 years but
| couldn't, on iOS, if they needed notifications. Now we can say
| bye to all the native, cross-platform frameworks and just use
| PWAs.
| julianlam wrote:
| This is great news... Unfortunate as I used to be bullish on
| browser based push notifications, but in reality they were never
| working reliably on mobile devices.
|
| I use a web API for my SMS gateway, and implemented push
| notifications via Firebase. It didn't matter whether I was using
| Fennec/Firefox, Chrome, or Vivaldi, I would always cease to be
| notified the moment the browser was killed off by my phone.
|
| I eventually got sick of it and ported the logic over to call
| ntfy.sh instead. Not a single missed message since.
| MacroChip wrote:
| I've had no issue with Firebase on a personal project just
| pushing to my android. The big caveat is that the push doesn't
| wake the phone. So all notifications drop in when I click the
| screen on.
| javajosh wrote:
| [flagged]
| fassssst wrote:
| Push notifications are for popping a toast on the user's
| device, like a new text message notification.
| npteljes wrote:
| >Or, in my own words, ignore Push notifications and just use
| WebSockets.
|
| Battery consumption is a big difference between the two. To
| keep the connection open, you need constant connection with the
| radio hardware, keeping it running, having it actively
| reconnect etc. Push notifications don't need a continous
| connection, the provider just connects from time to time and
| delivers the notifications then. There's some latency involved,
| but the power consumption is orders of magnitude lower.
| berdon wrote:
| The key difference is that push notification's backing
| "service" are out of band with the subscribers.
|
| Applications can subscribe to push notifications and get them
| even if they're off (the OS runs them and gives them the
| notification). WebSockets are closed if the app closes.
|
| A little to your point, the backing notification service might
| rely on WebSockets or polling, or a mixture of both, in
| implementation.
| quotemstr wrote:
| > Or, in my own words, ignore Push notifications and just use
| WebSockets.
|
| I wonder whether all the people who blindly accept utter
| nonsense ChatGPT tells them were applying any critical thinking
| before the age of AI.
| aedis wrote:
| Just make notification manager where I can see them all.
|
| Like RSS READER.
| rustybolt wrote:
| Push notifications need to die.
| charcircuit wrote:
| How do you know when your favorite live streamers go live? Push
| notifications is the best solution to this problem.
| atemerev wrote:
| I watch and read everything on my own time whenever I like
| it, why would I ever interrupt my flow? Every distraction
| ruins my day.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >why would I ever interrupt my flow?
|
| Because watching streams live is better than watching a
| vod.
| zemo wrote:
| I turn off all push notifications everywhere that aren't
| direct messages from a person I know, but even still, I
| think you're missing the point entirely here. You can't
| watch a livestream on your own time, it being live is the
| whole point.
| atemerev wrote:
| Ah, right. Didn't get much sleep today, sorry. Yes, that
| would be an exception.
| asteroidz wrote:
| I'm genuinely curious: What about push notifications (at least
| on desktop browsers) bothers you that much? I give permission
| to a few (like Gmail, etc.) and that's that; it makes my life
| less stressful knowing that I'll get alerted when it's time.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Hard disagree. I want push notifications for my messengers and
| forums. Calm down and just turn them off in your settings.
| rustybolt wrote:
| I have done this for like 10 times already.
| npteljes wrote:
| No, its abusers should die. Grabbing the attention when
| necessary is very useful. Regulation and user control are
| paramount however, otherwise it's just ripe avenue for abuse.
| bitL wrote:
| "Deliver timely and useful notifications to your users." -
| somehow I doubt the "useful" part. It's 99% just engagement noise
| to boost some PM bonus somewhere wasting precious time of users.
| otikik wrote:
| Deactivation of this feature, however, is done differently on
| every browser.
| bioemerl wrote:
| I have an app that makes very valid use of push notifications on
| the web. This should be celebrated because now you can do more
| without diving into the shitty apple app store with it's 100
| dollar a year fee.
| Eumenes wrote:
| We need modern Pop Ups!!
| lostfocus wrote:
| Oh boy, do I have exciting news for you!
| https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/popover.html
| throw-ru-938 wrote:
| Your username does check out here.
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