Notification support in browsers.

Im not sure where to put this so I will land it here for now. I have a suggestion / idea that might be cool for this site if it can be done. Google chrome, and a few other browsers (mostly mobile ones) now offer a notification feature. I think it would be cool if this site could offer notifications when someone posts in a thread you created or replied to one of your posts or recieved a private message. Fellow members weigh in on this please and tell both me and those responsable for such things what you think.

a reply to: DeviantMortal

The code needed to send notifications is not that hard to implement, for example, see this site.. However, to set up a system that gathers events on which you want to be notified can be a complex task. I like the idea, however. Perhaps SO can chime in?

a reply to: ForteanOrg

Thanks for the fast reply! I used to be into website making when I was much younger, back when you had to hand type the HTML tags, anything newer is beyond me LoL. I feel like the one guy still using the cell phone so big most of it is in a briefcase when it comes to net tech.

a reply to: DeviantMortal

Nothing wrong with hand coding. Actually, you still need all the crafts of days of yonder - AND then some - to build a proper website nowadays. CSS, Javascript, HTML5.. and most of that is generated by say PHP or Perl etc.

I am only aware of Chrome having this feature. Could be wrong.

I love the notifications my website generates. I cannot wait for full browser notification compliance as I cannot consider a custom app as well as the recurring fees to distribute let alone leasing a notification service.

But it will be commonplace very soon in browsers.

originally posted by: ForteanOrg
a reply to: DeviantMortal

The code needed to send notifications is not that hard to implement, for example, see this site.. However, to set up a system that gathers events on which you want to be notified can be a complex task. I like the idea, however. Perhaps SO can chime in?

actually, myats tab gathers whole bunch of information, so it would be a matter of using that - all those events are already filtered out.

a reply to: smirkley

Mozilla has it too. And more have it.

originally posted by: jedi_hamster
actually, myats tab gathers whole bunch of information, so it would be a matter of using that - all those events are already filtered out.

You'd need to set up a process / thread to check for updates though. E.g. some local _javascript that queries a remote function and then calls the notification stuff accordingly.

Can be done for most others browser too, e.g. see this site.

I love this idea. It would be much more interactive and probably keep threads alive for longer.

a reply to: ForteanOrg

Chrome yes, firefox yes?, safari no.

Targets should be the common phone browsers. And no safari means no iphones. At that is a big chunk of visitors.

Soon.....

originally posted by: DeviantMortal
I think it would be cool if this site could offer notifications when someone posts in a thread you created or replied to one of your posts or recieved a private message.

We already do get notifications when we receive a private message (the envelope turns white), and when someone replies to one of your posts (the notification appears on your message page).

I also get notified when someone posts to my threads on the myATS page, so I think the current notifications satisfy my needs, are you familiar with how all these work?

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Sure, but you'd need to BE on the proper page and/or refresh the page.

The difference with a notification system would be that you can actually browse some other site (or even do something outside of our browser, as long as it keeps running) and get a notification. The "notification" API uses OS specific notification code.

a reply to: smirkley

Agreed, it does not yet work on all browsers. But it can't do much harm to implement it either; the JS code detects if the browser supports notifications, and only issues notifications if it does. So, when IE and Apple finally catch up, it will work "out of the box" for them too.

Also, there are far more Android users than Apple users. So, perhaps it's not such a bad idea.

Im glad to see so much support for this idea, is there an official channel to go through or is this it?

a reply to: DeviantMortal

Might try a PM to SO

originally posted by: ForteanOrg
a reply to: Arbitrageur

Sure, but you'd need to BE on the proper page and/or refresh the page.

The difference with a notification system would be that you can actually browse some other site (or even do something outside of our browser, as long as it keeps running) and get a notification. The "notification" API uses OS specific notification code.

It's not hard to refresh a page, one mouse click does it. The method you're describing sounds very intrusive and it sounds to me like it would also put extra load on the ATS servers, when they can't even make ends meet as it is.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

You are correct that its not hard to refresh a page, but not everyone wants to sit by a tablet/computer/phone tapping/clicking refresh every few moments to see if someone made a reply.

I think the more valid point of yours is possible server strain and extra cost.

As far asbeing intrusive, the browser asks if you want the feature on or not, and will not turn on without your permission.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur
It's not hard to refresh a page, one mouse click does it.

Agreed. But that refreshes the entire page and generates traffic (though most of the page would probably be cached). And it does not warn you if you are working in another site, or using another app or application.

The method you're describing sounds very intrusive and it sounds to me like it would also put extra load on the ATS servers, when they can't even make ends meet as it is.

Well, it all depends on how frequent you'd query the ATS server to see if there is any news.

What you typically would do is to embed a JS function into the ATS site which checks if the browser supports notifications. If not, you're done and the site behaves as usual. This also holds true if the user has told the browser not to accept notifications or if the JS function is already running.

But if the browser supports notifications and the user has allowed them, the browser should then execute an additional function - let's say its "ATS_Notification() - which will fetch the notifications from the ATS server (e.g. using JSON, see: XMLHttpRequest() ), process the results and schedule an event to start itself again in say a few minutes.

But yes, you're right: if a user merely read a page and then leaves it, no traffic is generated at all where if you have some type of notification system, than some data is exchanged periodically.

And of course, if the user has numerous tabs open, this may also result in numerous queries being executed. This can be resolved (e.g. by implementing a server side locking protocol) but yes, there are some hairy details to be considered.

a reply to: DeviantMortal

Just for fun I created a php program that simply fetches the system time and converts it to JSON. Then I created a second page with some _javascript to call that php program every 3 seconds. The _javascript asks for permission and given you allow it, starts sending out a notification (of the time) every 3 seconds.

Works fine. Now, instead of the time one can of course simply fetch a notification. You still need to add a simple locking mechanisme / authentication mechanism, but all in all it's not really hard to do.

Not knowing how things are done, the biggest problem I see with a system like this (in which I'm not interested, I don't like that type of notification, I like to do things myself instead of having the computer bothering me with information at any time) is the number of and the resources used by the database queries needed for something like this.