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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

While I sympathize with the author, and feel the same way, I think Apple/Google have some blame here. They make certain simple things only possible in the apps, because the APIs are not exposed via the web.

Notifications is a big obvious one. Not sure if they've changed it since I last looked into it, but having an app installed was the only way to send a notification to someone for a long time.

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> having an app installed was the only way to send a notification

that used to be true, especially on ios. but web push has existed there for a while now for home screen web apps.

so that explains some of the history... doesn't really excuse today's habit of shipping the web as a second-class client.

Do people allow website notifications? One argument I have heard raised in favour of mobile apps is that people are more likely to give an app notification permission.

That's one of the main reasons to not install an app. Extremely few apps are able to limit their notifications to actually transactional events. As soon as they have the capability they start spamming away.

Chrome has notifications at least in the desktop version and it's the most horrible thing ever as noobs end up with tons of notifications from random scam websites.

Nah: https://www.magicbell.com/blog/using-push-notifications-in-p...

Reg. Notifications:

Isnt there are similar feature in iOS browser as in Firefox these "desktop notifications" that some webpages request?

Apple still doesnt give you the right dimensions for a page that switches between portrait and landscape.

How are you going to get a push notification from a site after the tab is closed?

The web notification standard supports this. They have since adopted it, but it took them a long time to do so.

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