Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Push Notification on Deskstop Via Firefox

Push Notification
Although many might not like the influence of mobile on game and Web design, push notifications are considered a handy update to traditional Web browsing. Now, everyone can enjoy that feature with the Firefox browser too.

The latest release build of the browser, Firefox 44, now supports push notifications on all platforms.

What’s useful with push notifications is that user can receive them from a website even if they aren’t visiting it at the time. If a new video or article is posted that they might be interested in, the push notifications can let users know right on their desktop. It could also be useful for a heads-up when an important email or message comes through.

Although this has the potential to be annoying if mishandled by a site, if used within reason, it could stop users having to check websites quite so regularly for updates.

Any developers looking to implement the push notifications will need to make some modifications to their web-code, but it’s not overly complicated. Firefox breaks it down in its latest blog post on its hacks site.

Users shouldn’t fret however. This isn’t something that will be enabled automatically without your permission. Much like learning the user's location or accessing their webcam, any website that wishes to use push notifications while ysers aren’t connected to the site will need their express permission.

All message 'payloads' are also encrypted to prevent any personal information from being gleaned by anyone looking to intercept the messages.

Of course push notifications isn’t a new feature for browsers, it’s just new to Firefox. Chrome and Safari have had it for several years at this point, but this does at least bring Firefox more in line with the functionality being offered by those browsers.

The Firefox 44 update also added H.264 video playback, as well as WebM/VP9 on systems that don't support the former standard (as per TechSpot).

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