7 ms·

Only the most anti-social sites break the back button, I kill the tab of any site that does. What I hate and is much more common is the "do you want notificati

by sliken 8y ago

Only the most anti-social sites break the back button, I kill the tab of any site that does. What I hate and is much more common is the "do you want notifications". I'd love a "never ask about notifications again" option.

MiddleEndian 8y ago
I'm not sure about Chrome, but in Firefox I know I set the default permission to 'never' ask somewhere in about:config. The ideal life is one without unwanted notifications.
- girzel 8y ago
  Is that dom.webnotifications.enabled? God I hope so, I don't know why I didn't look there sooner to turn off this crap.
  - MiddleEndian 8y ago
    Yeah that sounds about right. The other thing to disable is the full screen notification, which I think requires two keys now for some reason.
- mikro2nd 8y ago
  No need to drop to about:config... it's right there in the GUI for Privacy > Notifications -- a checkbox below the list of blacklisted sites.
clircle 8y ago
Firefox has this in about:preferences#privacy.
Klathmon 8y ago
That's an option right in the settings. Along with all other permission requests. Just set it to "never ask" or something similar and it will auto-deny all notification permission requests. You can also enable it for specific sites if you want.
- FreakyT 8y ago
  I definitely recommend doing this! UX-wise, I do wish that Chrome surfaced the option a bit better. Seems that a "never ask me again" checkbox, or even a shortcut to the relevant settings page, would be a nice touch.
  - Klathmon 8y ago
    Now I won't pretend to be within several magnitudes of the scale that Chrome runs at, but having given users the choice of "never ask for X again" in the past, it just ended up causing more issues than it ever solved. People don't read dialogs, they just don't. And giving them the option of "never ask again for any site" would most likely mean that some would hit it and it wouldn't even register that it was something they did, let alone remember they did it for the rest of their time using that browser. Then you start getting complaints about how Firefox has this notification feature but chrome doesn't, or notifications are broken on my chrome, or whatever else. That's why I'm hopeful for some new browser APIs which will manage permissions across the board, and will use things like heuristics to allow or disallow asking for permissions based on things like amount of interaction, number of times they interact with the website, and the "kind" of site it is (a PWA should be allowed to ask for notifications fairly early on in the process of using it, a news website should have to wait until the user has come back at least a few times before being able to ask). I don't envy browser vendors for having to make decisions on what is and isn't allowed there, because no matter what some well meaning sites will be caught in the crossfire, but it's by far the "least bad" solution in my opinion.
- paulie_a 8y ago
  There is a bit of hubris when it comes to websites even asking to allow notifications. No site is that important. why would I ever want to enable notifications under any circumstance ever. I generally get badgered about it by a site I'll probably only visit once.
  - hakfoo 8y ago
    It makes sense for web applications that are real applications. The CI suite my company uses sends notifications for a passed/broken build, which is a reasonable use. Mail sites can send new messages. The problem is that there's lots of content the publisher thinks is notification worthy, but not the user. No, I don't need a notification every time you post to RandomNewsSite.com.
technion 8y ago
Any time I visit a non tech relative - their desktop is constantly popping up with messages they claim to know nothing about. In the old days, you needed an RCE and some malware to do desktop popups. Now it's apparently just a feature. It's becoming an increasingly abused function.
- alexis_fr 8y ago
  The upside is, at least they don’t have a virus, not the kind that encrypts files or sends you CC info to China.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    No, they just have the regular spyware conveniently bundled with almost every site they visit :). Seriously, ad&tracking blocking is the first thing I do when I have to fix up a computer for a friend or family member.
    - acdha 8y ago
      This is why I applauded Firefox shipping it by default. It’s so much easier to leave it in than have to install something else or figure out which ad blockers are trustworthy.
- blfr 8y ago
  I thought it was a great idea at first but in reality I only use it for the calendar and get annoyed by requests on every other site.
kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
Firefox has an option to disable notification prompts in about:config.
jvzr 8y ago
Even worse (and this is something that we also see on mobile): they usually implement a fake pop-up that asks for Location/Notification before showing the real one, just to be able to spam that fake pop-up while a dissent in the real one would hide forever Evil
randallsquared 8y ago
GMail breaks the back button in this way. There are intermediate "pages" in the app in some cases such that hitting the "back" button puts the browser in a state that causes a replay of the thing that brought the page from which you were clicking the "back" button. This happens a lot when searching through mail. Once you're aware of it, it's simple enough to hold the back button and then go back several entries at once, but maybe this change will remove the "when I hit back, it goes back and then forward to where I was when I hit back" behavior in the first place.
MertsA 8y ago
I would love it if Google would identify sites that ask for notification permissions without any request from the user while crawling sites. Then just make a blacklist of those sites ala the safe browsing lists. There's no good usage for sites requesting notification permission without the user opting into it first.
otikik 8y ago
On Firefox at least, you can: Preferences / Permissions / Notifications / [x] Block new requests asking to allow notifications
adtac 8y ago
>I kill the tab of any site that does I believe this is one of the intended effects. For example, when you click on a link after a Google search, and then click the back button to go back to the search results, I imagine Google records this to downrank that page for that query in a small way. When you kill the tab, you forfeit this opportunity.
raxxorrax 8y ago
You will get more problems like these if the largest advertising company develops browsers. No excuse for the other browsers though...
Tsubasachan 8y ago
I don't use Chrome but FF lets you block requests to allow notifications. Its in settings>privacy&security>permissions.

by sliken 8y ago

MiddleEndian 8y ago

I'm not sure about Chrome, but in Firefox I know I set the default permission to 'never' ask somewhere in about:config. The ideal life is one without unwanted notifications.

girzel 8y ago
Is that dom.webnotifications.enabled? God I hope so, I don't know why I didn't look there sooner to turn off this crap.
- MiddleEndian 8y ago
  Yeah that sounds about right. The other thing to disable is the full screen notification, which I think requires two keys now for some reason.
mikro2nd 8y ago
No need to drop to about:config... it's right there in the GUI for Privacy > Notifications -- a checkbox below the list of blacklisted sites.

clircle 8y ago

Firefox has this in about:preferences#privacy.

Klathmon 8y ago

That's an option right in the settings. Along with all other permission requests. Just set it to "never ask" or something similar and it will auto-deny all notification permission requests. You can also enable it for specific sites if you want.

FreakyT 8y ago
I definitely recommend doing this! UX-wise, I do wish that Chrome surfaced the option a bit better. Seems that a "never ask me again" checkbox, or even a shortcut to the relevant settings page, would be a nice touch.
- Klathmon 8y ago
  Now I won't pretend to be within several magnitudes of the scale that Chrome runs at, but having given users the choice of "never ask for X again" in the past, it just ended up causing more issues than it ever solved. People don't read dialogs, they just don't. And giving them the option of "never ask again for any site" would most likely mean that some would hit it and it wouldn't even register that it was something they did, let alone remember they did it for the rest of their time using that browser. Then you start getting complaints about how Firefox has this notification feature but chrome doesn't, or notifications are broken on my chrome, or whatever else. That's why I'm hopeful for some new browser APIs which will manage permissions across the board, and will use things like heuristics to allow or disallow asking for permissions based on things like amount of interaction, number of times they interact with the website, and the "kind" of site it is (a PWA should be allowed to ask for notifications fairly early on in the process of using it, a news website should have to wait until the user has come back at least a few times before being able to ask). I don't envy browser vendors for having to make decisions on what is and isn't allowed there, because no matter what some well meaning sites will be caught in the crossfire, but it's by far the "least bad" solution in my opinion.
paulie_a 8y ago
There is a bit of hubris when it comes to websites even asking to allow notifications. No site is that important. why would I ever want to enable notifications under any circumstance ever. I generally get badgered about it by a site I'll probably only visit once.
- hakfoo 8y ago
  It makes sense for web applications that are real applications. The CI suite my company uses sends notifications for a passed/broken build, which is a reasonable use. Mail sites can send new messages. The problem is that there's lots of content the publisher thinks is notification worthy, but not the user. No, I don't need a notification every time you post to RandomNewsSite.com.

technion 8y ago

Any time I visit a non tech relative - their desktop is constantly popping up with messages they claim to know nothing about. In the old days, you needed an RCE and some malware to do desktop popups. Now it's apparently just a feature. It's becoming an increasingly abused function.

alexis_fr 8y ago
The upside is, at least they don’t have a virus, not the kind that encrypts files or sends you CC info to China.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  No, they just have the regular spyware conveniently bundled with almost every site they visit :). Seriously, ad&tracking blocking is the first thing I do when I have to fix up a computer for a friend or family member.
  - acdha 8y ago
    This is why I applauded Firefox shipping it by default. It’s so much easier to leave it in than have to install something else or figure out which ad blockers are trustworthy.
blfr 8y ago
I thought it was a great idea at first but in reality I only use it for the calendar and get annoyed by requests on every other site.

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago

Firefox has an option to disable notification prompts in about:config.

jvzr 8y ago

Even worse (and this is something that we also see on mobile): they usually implement a fake pop-up that asks for Location/Notification before showing the real one, just to be able to spam that fake pop-up while a dissent in the real one would hide forever Evil

randallsquared 8y ago

GMail breaks the back button in this way. There are intermediate "pages" in the app in some cases such that hitting the "back" button puts the browser in a state that causes a replay of the thing that brought the page from which you were clicking the "back" button. This happens a lot when searching through mail. Once you're aware of it, it's simple enough to hold the back button and then go back several entries at once, but maybe this change will remove the "when I hit back, it goes back and then forward to where I was when I hit back" behavior in the first place.

MertsA 8y ago

I would love it if Google would identify sites that ask for notification permissions without any request from the user while crawling sites. Then just make a blacklist of those sites ala the safe browsing lists. There's no good usage for sites requesting notification permission without the user opting into it first.

otikik 8y ago

On Firefox at least, you can: Preferences / Permissions / Notifications / [x] Block new requests asking to allow notifications

adtac 8y ago

>I kill the tab of any site that does I believe this is one of the intended effects. For example, when you click on a link after a Google search, and then click the back button to go back to the search results, I imagine Google records this to downrank that page for that query in a small way. When you kill the tab, you forfeit this opportunity.

raxxorrax 8y ago

You will get more problems like these if the largest advertising company develops browsers. No excuse for the other browsers though...

Tsubasachan 8y ago

I don't use Chrome but FF lets you block requests to allow notifications. Its in settings>privacy&security>permissions.