> I have never seen them used for any legitimate or useful purpose
That's definitely overblown. I've got a half-dozen enabled, and on re-reviewing that list, I still think they're legitimate. Upon checking mine, I've whitelisted Google Calendar, Gmail, Google Meet, Mattermost (work chat app), and Slack, and I want notifications enabled for all those things.
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> I've got a half-dozen enabled[…]
That's fine for you, a purveyor of tech news. For almost everyone else, they are a means to spam and false malware notifications.
Our company provides services to clients who rely on computers but aren't necessarily computer experts. The only instances of browser notifications that I've seen (on client machines) are those I just described. In fact, yours is the first instance of someone appreciating them that I've encountered.
No shade intended. I just don't think their benefit outweighs their abuse.
TFA said they're without purpose, I said I disagree. You're now saying their abuse outweighs their benefit, which is a separate topic, and is more subjective. I'm not sure I entirely agree, but I could definitely see a case for that.
We rely on them extensively for basic notification functionality in healthcare applications.
We literally send out alerts that save people's lives using web push notifications, so I think it's a bit cavalier to dismiss them entirely.
I do agree that it would be nice if the were restricted a bit more, perhaps to installed PWAs of some sort.
Is that HIPAA compliant? What happens when Google/Apple/whoever goes down (does happen!), do patients die?
Yes, the alert is a link to an authenticated PWA, no PHI is sent in a message.
As far as push server failure, we also have SMS notifications as fallback.
Phone, text, email, even snail mail.
What's cavalier is thinking because your business wants to use them that they then should be used.
In-app notifications, SMS and web push notifications are all important means of communicating events that clinicians need to be aware of.
This is delivered via a PWA so that it works on the wide variety of devices we see across patients and clinicians.
Many elderly patients are confused by native apps and app store experiences. Many of them refuse to use an "app". Additionally, things like accessibility are problems that have been solved effectively on the web but can be more challenging with native apps.
Many clinical devices don't support app stores or installation of native applications.
When you've tried to implement reliable health care systems for elderly populations, clinical settings, mobile in-field settings and physicians in a HIPAA regulated space perhaps you'll be able to tell me a better way.
Your assumption that we use any technology because "we want to" indicates that you don't have much experience with this stuff, perhaps it would be better for you to reserve judgement in the future until you understand a subject a bit more thoroughly.
Most of it are native apps tho ?
The difference is that you install app explicitly for purpuse of doing that, vs "I accidentally clicked on website and now it sends crap to my feed" of average illiterate users.
I have a couple of clients I woke with so I prefer to isolate them by profile in browser…
The key idea is that enabling notification should be an explicit actions, and have more consent than a single click.
I have three enabled. One is for a past side-hustle, but the others are messages.android.com and messages.google.com . Definitely keeping both of those, even if/when I finally mostly depart the google ecosystem.
I (over)use the keyboard shortcut of windows key+# (so win+1 switches the focus to the first application icon on the taskbar, win+2 the second, etc), and I've got muscle memory of which applications are pinned to each place. Plus, I've already got the muscle memory of how to get to the various websites I keep open.
Personally I haven't had any use cases for them and they have only been a source of frustration.