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Comment by userbinator | Hacker News Reader

The more I see posts like this that complain about other browsers lacking features and essentially encouraging the "Google-isation" of browsers, the more convinced I am of the power of Google's gigantic monopoly-enhancing propaganda-machine.

Firefox unfortunately has no choice but to be dragged along by Google.

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I'm a mobile and desktop Firefox user, and Firefox has supported the features that are missing from iOS Safari like the Web Notifications API since 2013, and the Web Push API since January 2016.

iOS dev since 2014 here. So many of my app ideas would have been completed 2-5x quicker if mobile Safari supported push notifications. It is unreasonable gatekeeping.

It is very reasonable gatekeeping. People would be inundated with notifications on their phones.

No: you would--at worst--be asked more often than you would like to approve notifications for random websites, all of which you would click no on; this feature doesn't just magically cause notifications... hell: it already even exists on desktop Safari and I just click "no".

Yeah, having to click no all the time on desktop Safari is terrible.

Also websites have realized that I am going to click No in the browser, so now they popup first asking if I want to allow push notifications in JavaScript so when I click no, they can ask me again later, vs if they popped up the browser and got a "No" there they could never ask me again.

Did I accidentally disable this or something? I’ve never seen it.

Everyone acts like

1. For some reason it has to be some sort of pop up, it could easily be a small icon in your bar

2. Apple couldn’t/wouldn’t design this so that it was unobtrusive

3. If the way they did design it was still too annoying, they wouldn’t make it less so, or make it easy to turn off

Why do so many on HN argue from “if it existed it would obviously be in form X that already exists and therefore be bad and therefore I never want it and will oppose it vehemently” it’s a total lack of capability of even the most incremental innovative thinking.

> 1. For some reason it has to be some sort of pop up, it could easily be a small icon in your bar

It is a popup right now... it is in your face and requires immediate action.

An example:

https://imgur.com/a/GfqUuAZ

Using:

https://www.bennish.net/web-notifications.html

> 2. Apple couldn’t/wouldn’t design this so that it was unobtrusive

It is obtrusive in that it is a full-window popover and you can't go to any other tabs until you have completed the action.

> 3. If the way they did design it was still too annoying, they wouldn’t make it less so, or make it easy to turn off

You can currently disable it browser wide in Preferences -> Websites => "Allow websites to ask permission to send notifications".

However, that doesn't stop various websites from displaying their own JavaScript based popups and requests before even attempting to use the Web Push Notifications API to see if the user wants to grant access using the native API's.

This way they can nag the user over and over to enable notifications whereas if you deny it once in the browser you need to take a bunch of manual steps to remove the website and grant them access.

Wow, now I understand the sentiment... but that's a reason to stop using Safari, not against notifications.

Safari does not use the Web Push or Notification API, Apple has a bespoke Safari Push Notifications[1] API on macOS, so this poor implementation is completely on Apple.

On Firefox, it just puts a little message window icon in your address bar if you didn't trigger the Notifications API permission via a control on the website. When you do trigger the permissions through user interaction, and unobstructive widget shows up[2] that can be promptly hidden without ever actually interacting with it, unlike in your Safari example.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/notifications/safari-push-notifi...

[2] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/push-notifications-fire...

>> it’s a total lack of capability of even the most incremental innovative thinking

Honestly, HN is a cargo cult of native only, anti web app sentiment. It’s frustrating.

Or...

Your opinion isn’t held by other people, some of whom disagree with your opinion and are expressing that.

HN has many cargo cults not reflected by broader tech. It certainly has a crowd.

> Your opinion isn’t held by other people, some of whom disagree with your opinion and are expressing that.

The other opinion seems "notifications cannot be disabled, therefore notifications are bad".

If you don't want to see notification requests, you never will. Granted: you need to be able to change settings, in a very restricted environment or with a custom clone of some browser you might not be able to.

For most users, that's not a problem. I'm one of them. I don't see notification requests on my desktop or phone. Neither do I see requests for geo-location, even though the browser is fundamentally capable of providing my geo-location to websites through an API; I've disabled it.

I didn’t express an opinion either way. But it’s clear to me that there are some amongst us that believe that a difference of opinion must mean everyone who disagrees must therefore be in a cargo cult. That is what I am taking issue with. It’s also against the guidelines here.

I'm still struggling to find out the non-cult reason for "the feature must be banned from the browser, just being able to disable it for all time with a single click is not enough".

It'll be the same reason as the "cult" of "what I want should be the norm and anyone who disagrees, for whatever reason, must be in a cult"

I think the misunderstanding is that the HN sentiment is very tangential to how real average users experience websites. Here everyone uses Adblock and NoScript, whereas most users have neither installed. So HN is more like a cult, whereas the real world is much larger and not like a cult?

I agree about clicking no all the time. This isn't an intractable problem, though; people just assume the ask-on-visit interaction pattern is the only way to implement this kind of functionality.

If I were on the Mobile Safari team, I'd propose bundling notifications into the bookmark workflow. If a user chooses to bookmark a site, prompt them at that moment (as an option in the modal) to subscribe to notifications if the site offers it. Because the user is expressing an interest in returning to the site, it's now appropriate to ask them to enable notifications, versus their first visit.

(For sites accessed through a synced iCloud bookmark, however, I would show a notifications prompt for the first visit on that device.)

Perhaps desktop Safari should work the way you described. Whenever I get a new Mac, one of the first things I do is stop allowing any website to ask to notify me.

I wish developers could get it through their skulls. I don’t want your notifications. Your app is not important enough that I’m willing to be interrupted by you. The lack of notifications is a desired feature. Please stop using notifications. It is almost always a pathetic attempt to try to “drive engagement” to your app. If I want to run your app I will run it. You don’t have to nudge me into it. The world would be a better place if all platforms got rid of them. Please stop adding to the problem.

"I don't want notifications" is just a setting in a modern browser. And voila, it's as if notifications did not exist as a feature. I don't understand why you need the feature to not exist; do you feel tempted to leave them enabled if they can be enabled?

I don't like notifications. I never get any notifications requests, unless I'm in a private window trying because some site wouldn't work with adblockers etc. Life can be so simple.

> I don’t want your notifications. Your app is not important enough that I’m willing to be interrupted by you. The lack of notifications is a desired feature. Please stop using notifications.

I don't want your phone calls. Your conversation is not important enough that I'm willing to be interrupted by you. The lack of phone calls is a desired feature. Please stop using phone calls. If I want to talk to you I will write you a letter. You don't have to nudge me into it.

As someone who gets marketing calls every fine day, I agree with your every word. And with gp too.

The problem with not implementing notifications is that when they are useful (instant dispatch software), they are not implemented. But honestly I’d just spin up a telegram or email bot, if clients were not brainwashed with tekhnology. Messages and email are notifications. It is also a matter of minutes, opposed to creating a stupid service worker client-server-like runtime and trying to get things right without any test mode (long story short, implementing and debugging webpush requires publishing every change to a certified https host). There is even an entire company that sells you a properly configured webpush as a service. That’s just stupid.

Odd argument. SMS is a hellscape to DIY (especially financially), email even more so with DKIM. If by SMS/email you mean "Twilio" or "Mailchimp," well, that's no different than using a third party push service.

The mistake was the presentation UI for notifications. Instead of making it an active question for users to dismiss, it should been presented as a subtle toggle somewhere in the UI chrome-- sort of like the star icon to add to favourites.

This would have made it possible to offer notifications without being in-your-face about it, which would have made them more amenable for sites that were concerned about brand image and user feedback. The paradigm might not have become unavoidably tainted, and we'd just name-and-shame the bad actors.

It also makes it clear that the notification consent shouldn't be a one-way street-- you should be able to discontinue notifications through the same UI and in an obvious manner, rather than treating it as a consent you can easily offer, but not easily retract.

I’ve been slowly using safari more and more and this made me realize why I enjoy surfing the web in it more: no constant stream of sites asking for location/notifications/whatever

And I don’t wanna click no all the time. Nobody does.

Why should a web browser be able to send notifications? Why are we overloading web browsers to do more and more things? I get that transferring data over the internet is king, but surely we can devise better user interfaces than bloated browsers, etc?

Why not? Why must an app be written natively?

Because it offers superior experience.

Apps don't (or shouldn't) need to be native to offer a good user experience.

But often writing them natively does do this.

Yes they need and should be native, if you don't want to reinvent OS integration yourself.

Web browsers are essentially an inner platform now. Instead of taking the time to develop native apps, or even to write using cross-platform frameworks, developers prefer to trade performance/security/privacy for developer time. It's really just an acceleration of a trend that has been going on for decades (Wirth's Law) but Web 2.0 is hip and cool. You're not writing some lumbering dog of a Java application (write once run anywhere!), you're agile and using React and web sockets, you're one of the cool kids (writing a lumbering dog of a Javascript application).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner-platform_effect

All in all, building out applications using cross-platform frameworks seems to be a far better solution for end users, and not significantly worse in terms of developer velocity, but I think there are other reasons they are not adopted, primarily that the web makes it far easier to invade privacy and deploy dark patterns, while that behavior typically is checked by the app store approval process for "native" or cross-platform applications.

> the web makes it far easier to invade privacy and deploy dark patterns, while that behavior typically is checked by the app store

Disagree. One reason sites want me to use their app is because I can’t block trackers. I wont use native apps if there is a web alternative BECAUSE i value privacy.

What trackers? Apps are sandboxed, so they shouldn't be able to track you.

>Why should a web browser be able to send notifications?

Why not? Web browsers are not just for reading text based articles. Most use a calendar, email, perhaps some kind of chat app through their browser. Aren't these and other similar use cases good reasons for notifications to exist?

ChromeOS has won, Safari is the only one left standing on the way that actually matters.

Firefox as much as I love it, and has been my main browser linage since the Netscape days, doesn't stand a chance.

Specially when everyone is now packaging Chrome as Electron, while praising it for GNU/Linux desktop apps.

I’ve never heard praise for electron, though that could be the crowd I associate with. Electron apps are the worst of both worlds; it’s so bad that I’m willing to open a web browser if electron is the other option.

Just check the comments here, where many of us happen to bash it, while others praise it for bringing apps to GNU/Linux.

99% of Electron stuff could be done as pure Web application, and if native support is required, running as daemon.

I don't think it's a contest really. I'm happy using Firefox knowing it's got a small marketshare. The same way I vote for a small political party knowing they'll never win any election.

With Firefox I don't see any issues related to the marketshare. All add-ons I want are available and all websites work just fine except one or two that just block it outright just out of spite (Apple Business Manager - business.apple.com being one)

Sure, but what do you think it will happen the day Google no longer supports its development?

As far as I know Mozilla doesn't have that many sources to keep it running, and the latest round of layouffs was kind of a signal of what is yet to come.

Your speculation doesn't hold water. They have been increasing their hiring recently, and their layoffs were largely in areas where community members could power development and in experimental areas. MDN still exists and has good info. Note anyone can contribute straight on GitHub. Servo got picked up by the Linux Foundation after much of Servo already got integrated into Firefox. The Rust Foundation recently started and multiple big names have picked up large Rust contributors. So Mozilla made a smart move laying off those people. People on HN don't want to admit it.

We are talking about browsers with serious market share here, Rust and Servo are irrelevant to the future of the Web.

Let Google close the money stream and lets see what happens.

I hope to be wrong.

Well then we'll see what happens... For now it's great. Nothing is forever, even Internet explorer came to an end after its (totally undeserved) monopoly.

I would pay a lot though to keep it going. Like 100 a year or so (for me that's a lot :) )

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