Ask HN: How do the new Gmail browser-powered desktop notifications work?

1 pointstefanobernardi2 comments

So Google has just soft launched a new feature for Gmail: http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/26/browser-powered-desktop-notifications-are-coming-to-gmail/

I'm wondering how does this actually work? Can I build it for my apps too?

Thanks in advance

It uses "Web Notifications". You can read the draft spec here: http://dev.w3.org/2006/webapi/WebNotifications/publish/