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You should understand the argument before you form an opinion on it. First of all, there are plenty of us who have legitimate use cases for web push. Second, if

You should understand the argument before you form an opinion on it. First of all, there are plenty of us who have legitimate use cases for web push. Second, if you care about being bothered by shitty sites prompting you unprovoked, you have a couple options: content blockers or use different sites. The need for notifications is real and Apple’s choice to exclude their availability in iOS is a business move not a technical move or a users-first move. Making PWAs better on iOS runs counter to Apple’s walled garden business model.

ori_b 7y ago
> The need for notifications is real Do you keep metrics on acceptance rates? How many of the notification prompts that you pop up are actually accepted? How much of the time are you just annoying your users?
- lwansbrough 7y ago
  Like I said, our use case is legitimate in the strictest sense. Users request to enable notifications themselves. We never automatically prompt for it. So like.. 100%.
tannhaeuser 7y ago
> There are plenty of us who have legitimate use cases for web push Such as? The only use case for notifications and PWAs I'm coming across are clickbait news sites creating a sense of urgency with "homepage was updated" modals obscuring content and capturing click events. Web user agents have freedoms in rendering pages to users, and Safari siding with users and power efficiency is a good thing. In line with other comments, I predict browsers will soon provide opt-out for notifications, then eventually deprecate them altogether, like they did with popups/popunders. Now, more importantly, Safari could work on their odd pick list control rendering like a dial wheel.
- lwansbrough 7y ago
  > Such as? Such as a user presses a button in order to enable push notifications.
  - soraminazuki 7y ago
    That's an explanation of how users can allow notifications, not why they should.
- modeless 7y ago
  Here's a site I made with a legitimate use of Web Push. https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/ https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/
  - tannhaeuser 7y ago
    Ok, but I hope you can agree that the overwhelming majority of uses is a user-hostile dark pattern in news sites where they put crap onto pages so you click on it to go away, with the intent to generate additional page views and ad play-outs.
    - modeless 7y ago
      Of course. Likewise, I hope you can agree that the abuse of Web Push and other new browser features is a problem that can and should be solved without totally giving up on those new features and blocking or removing them entirely. I see a lot of people advocating that the Web should be essentially frozen at its current feature set or even regressed to something much less capable, and that makes me sad.
    - nsomaru 7y ago
      You asked for a legitimate use case and are now shifting the goal posts to be about “majority.” If the web is to improve we need new features and strategies to mitigate the negative effects of the implementation of these features. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
      - tannhaeuser 7y ago
        New features on "the web" are coming straight from Google to push their monopolist agenda (DoH, URL hiding just to name a few from this past week). Seeing as today's web is bordering on becoming useless (save for a couple enthusiast sites) and net-negative even, only helping autocrats, criminals, surveillance and privacy-invading monopolists rather than users and content creators I'd say we've already thrown out the baby with the bath water, and the "save the web" at all costs narrative needs to go away.
  - 7y ago
- nsomaru 7y ago
  I run a premium retreat in rural India for which I built a web based portal to act as an “app” for the event. I don’t have the resources to build native and web applications for each platform. Right now we make announcements for the next schedule item. I’d like to notify attendees via the web app I wrote and have it display schedule information offline.
  - anoncake 7y ago
    > I’d like to notify attendees via the web app I wrote You can notify them by email, SMS or using any other messenger. There's no need to force another on your customers. > and have it display schedule information offline. Your customers already have a calendar application, there's no need to make them visit a web page for that. At least there wouldn't if Google supported Webcal so everyone can use their favorite native applications instead. But that wouldn't push people towards Google's services and garbage web apps.
- SiVal 7y ago
  The only use case for notifications and PWAs I'm coming across are clickbait news sites... I write apps for myself, my family, and my friends. I put them on MY server and make them available to OUR devices. We should be able to notify ourselves whenever we want. Our devices should ask whether we want notifications or not to make sure, and we should be able to say yes. If a browser maker simply wants to avoid burdening the user, there should be a way to choose a default with blacklist or whitelist exceptions. Instead, Apple (for example) says, "If you want to burden users by asking them if they want notifications, that would be very bad unless you first pay us for a dev account and keep paying and commit to using our own proprietary tech instead of using open web tech, because users aren't bothered by requests to allow notifications as long as they know it helps Apple. If you do, we will grant you the privilege of trying to persuade us that your app benefits us and not just yourself and your friends. Our App Store terms require you to show how your app isn't just a website (which we won't allow to send notifications) but serves Apple's needs in some way before we'll let you send notifications to yourself. If it were really about serving the needs of users, iOS could allow users a choice between the default "browser that says NO" and "sides with users and power efficiency" and alternative browsers that, like App Store apps, show their contempt for users by letting them decide for themselves what they want.
keeganpoppen 7y ago
wait is that "the argument" we're supposed to understand? you know, just because I use alert() in my code to debug doesn't mean that it should necessarily actually... work, and stuff... tl;dr - the tragedy of the commons exists; hence, lots of shitty technology that would otherwise be prone to it doesn't exist.
- lwansbrough 7y ago
  Not if you actually solve the problem.. which is basically just to make the permission only possible if the user interacts with the page in some way that satisfies a heuristic.
millstone 7y ago
The need for notifications is real, but the need to protect users from unwanted notifications and tracking and fingerprinting is real too, and more pressing. Every site complains about your content blocker. Every site wants to send you notifications. Every site wants your email address to advertise at you. And with PWAs, every site will want to establish a presence on your computer. Your motives may be pure, but your chosen platform does not place you in good company.
paganel 7y ago
What is so “real” about the need for notifications? Apart from messenger/email for which we already have dedicated apps both on desktop and on mobile, for what else would we “really” need push notifications? I don’t really want to be interrupted by anything that isn’t urgent, and stuff other than messaging is not urgent at all (I’m talking browser interactions here, I suspect and hope that things like nuclear power plants don’t rely for their “urgent” stuff on browsers’ capabilities and I also hope they don’t have anything to do with easily-hackable browsers at all).

ori_b 7y ago

> The need for notifications is real Do you keep metrics on acceptance rates? How many of the notification prompts that you pop up are actually accepted? How much of the time are you just annoying your users?

lwansbrough 7y ago
Like I said, our use case is legitimate in the strictest sense. Users request to enable notifications themselves. We never automatically prompt for it. So like.. 100%.

tannhaeuser 7y ago

> There are plenty of us who have legitimate use cases for web push Such as? The only use case for notifications and PWAs I'm coming across are clickbait news sites creating a sense of urgency with "homepage was updated" modals obscuring content and capturing click events. Web user agents have freedoms in rendering pages to users, and Safari siding with users and power efficiency is a good thing. In line with other comments, I predict browsers will soon provide opt-out for notifications, then eventually deprecate them altogether, like they did with popups/popunders. Now, more importantly, Safari could work on their odd pick list control rendering like a dial wheel.

lwansbrough 7y ago
> Such as? Such as a user presses a button in order to enable push notifications.
- soraminazuki 7y ago
  That's an explanation of how users can allow notifications, not why they should.
modeless 7y ago
Here's a site I made with a legitimate use of Web Push. https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/ https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/
- tannhaeuser 7y ago
  Ok, but I hope you can agree that the overwhelming majority of uses is a user-hostile dark pattern in news sites where they put crap onto pages so you click on it to go away, with the intent to generate additional page views and ad play-outs.
  - modeless 7y ago
    Of course. Likewise, I hope you can agree that the abuse of Web Push and other new browser features is a problem that can and should be solved without totally giving up on those new features and blocking or removing them entirely. I see a lot of people advocating that the Web should be essentially frozen at its current feature set or even regressed to something much less capable, and that makes me sad.
  - nsomaru 7y ago
    You asked for a legitimate use case and are now shifting the goal posts to be about “majority.” If the web is to improve we need new features and strategies to mitigate the negative effects of the implementation of these features. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
    - tannhaeuser 7y ago
      New features on "the web" are coming straight from Google to push their monopolist agenda (DoH, URL hiding just to name a few from this past week). Seeing as today's web is bordering on becoming useless (save for a couple enthusiast sites) and net-negative even, only helping autocrats, criminals, surveillance and privacy-invading monopolists rather than users and content creators I'd say we've already thrown out the baby with the bath water, and the "save the web" at all costs narrative needs to go away.
- 7y ago
nsomaru 7y ago
I run a premium retreat in rural India for which I built a web based portal to act as an “app” for the event. I don’t have the resources to build native and web applications for each platform. Right now we make announcements for the next schedule item. I’d like to notify attendees via the web app I wrote and have it display schedule information offline.
- anoncake 7y ago
  > I’d like to notify attendees via the web app I wrote You can notify them by email, SMS or using any other messenger. There's no need to force another on your customers. > and have it display schedule information offline. Your customers already have a calendar application, there's no need to make them visit a web page for that. At least there wouldn't if Google supported Webcal so everyone can use their favorite native applications instead. But that wouldn't push people towards Google's services and garbage web apps.
SiVal 7y ago
The only use case for notifications and PWAs I'm coming across are clickbait news sites... I write apps for myself, my family, and my friends. I put them on MY server and make them available to OUR devices. We should be able to notify ourselves whenever we want. Our devices should ask whether we want notifications or not to make sure, and we should be able to say yes. If a browser maker simply wants to avoid burdening the user, there should be a way to choose a default with blacklist or whitelist exceptions. Instead, Apple (for example) says, "If you want to burden users by asking them if they want notifications, that would be very bad unless you first pay us for a dev account and keep paying and commit to using our own proprietary tech instead of using open web tech, because users aren't bothered by requests to allow notifications as long as they know it helps Apple. If you do, we will grant you the privilege of trying to persuade us that your app benefits us and not just yourself and your friends. Our App Store terms require you to show how your app isn't just a website (which we won't allow to send notifications) but serves Apple's needs in some way before we'll let you send notifications to yourself. If it were really about serving the needs of users, iOS could allow users a choice between the default "browser that says NO" and "sides with users and power efficiency" and alternative browsers that, like App Store apps, show their contempt for users by letting them decide for themselves what they want.

keeganpoppen 7y ago

wait is that "the argument" we're supposed to understand? you know, just because I use alert() in my code to debug doesn't mean that it should necessarily actually... work, and stuff... tl;dr - the tragedy of the commons exists; hence, lots of shitty technology that would otherwise be prone to it doesn't exist.

lwansbrough 7y ago
Not if you actually solve the problem.. which is basically just to make the permission only possible if the user interacts with the page in some way that satisfies a heuristic.

millstone 7y ago

The need for notifications is real, but the need to protect users from unwanted notifications and tracking and fingerprinting is real too, and more pressing. Every site complains about your content blocker. Every site wants to send you notifications. Every site wants your email address to advertise at you. And with PWAs, every site will want to establish a presence on your computer. Your motives may be pure, but your chosen platform does not place you in good company.

paganel 7y ago

What is so “real” about the need for notifications? Apart from messenger/email for which we already have dedicated apps both on desktop and on mobile, for what else would we “really” need push notifications? I don’t really want to be interrupted by anything that isn’t urgent, and stuff other than messaging is not urgent at all (I’m talking browser interactions here, I suspect and hope that things like nuclear power plants don’t rely for their “urgent” stuff on browsers’ capabilities and I also hope they don’t have anything to do with easily-hackable browsers at all).