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Comment by tonyedgecombe | Hacker News Reader

I hope they never implement them on mobile Safari, those things are a pain in the backside on the desktop.

In what way?

I see you are new here, would you like to receive notifications from us? You need to decide on it before even looking at out offerings.

Okay, what about signing up to our newsletter?

Okay, we will track you now all over the internet but if you like you can manage that.

JUST GO AWAY

Okay, btw to see the rest of the article or any of the pictures you need to create an account first.

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Web technologist are clueless about what the Web has become. Please let browsers remain HTML and CSS viewing tools and make an app that I can review on the App Store page before committing to install it.

I hope Apple never implements website notifications on mobile.

You could just disable the notifications? You can do this in pretty much any browser.

https://support.apple.com/guide/safari/customize-website-not...

That doesn't mean that the website wont ask. Because they have single chance, the API is called after they receive your consent through an HTML dialog that looks similar to the native one.

If you disable them, they are not visible. If a website shows you a modal that looks like a notification consent prompt, I hardly see what that has to do with a browser vendor, which is the subject of this thread.

Because right now, they don't render that modal on Mobile Safari since there's no notification support. If they add notification support, we'll start getting those popups.

You could then use Brave which blocks in-website ads and annoyances even on iOS.

I agree that those patterns are annoying but installing an app is at least as many clicks and in fact I may have to search through a few apps to make sure I am installing the right one and not some ripoff that Apple tries to lure me towards with their broken search.

PWA's could be allowed to use things like the push API only if added to the home screen and this problem would be completely solved. You don't like browsers becoming app platforms but I am sorry to say that that ship has sailed on desktop and while Apple is fighting it on mobile, it's a fight they will lose eventually.

Installing an app gives you a chance to consider the option first, with websites you are required to download and install it to take a look and see what is it all about.

On the other hand I wouldn't have a problem with the model where PWA's notifications and other functionalities are limited to apps added to the home screen and the options to manage those is exactly the same with native apps. I don't advocate that all apps must go through the App Store.

Would you like to be notified about meetings in your calendar?

Yes

Would you like notifications when someone mentions or DMs you in your work chat?

Yes

Would you like to know when you get emails?

Yes

Also only one of the things you mentioned has anything to do with notifications.

We could have had passwordless internet if people behaved nicely. Instead of signing in into Gmail with a password and 2FA code, typing your e-mail address would have been enough to see your e-mails if everyone was honest and never misuse this power.

We wouldn't need authentication then...

The nice thing about open standards like web push notifications vs. proprietary apps' arbitrary logic is that the open standard version puts users in control.

The browser is free to refuse every notification request AND make websites believe the notifications have been enabled. Unless smartphone OS vendors are kind enough, you can't do that with app notifications.

It seems you're arguing against the concept of push notifications itself, not whether the native or web app implementation is better.

No No No

Meetings in my calendar, maybe, but I don't need them in the browser because I use a native app because I care about resource usage.

The rest of them, definitely not. Interruptions are extraordinarily costly. I'll respond within a few hours and when I message you about something, I have the same expectations.

As one of the rare Safari desktop users: the most useful key-bind I made was command-shift-r to bring up reader mode. A lot of the "growth hacking" metrics have made the web near-unusable, but reader mode goes a long way towards making it tolerable.

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