Comment by fredley
9 years ago
Push notifications and home-screen icons are strictly opt-in. If you don't want them, don't opt, simple as. I use webapps for several things because I can much better protect myself from tracking and data-harvesting with a well-configured browser than I can using a native app.
As I said, desktop Safari allows websites to prompt me for push notifications.
I can't stand it: that a web site has the ability to display a modal prompt sheet that I have to cancel.
There's a preference to disable this, though. Don't get me wrong - it's awful and I hate it. But I'm sure there are valid use-cases for people who use e.g. webmail.
This isn't new. Desktop browsers have been showing modal prompts via the javascript `prompt()` method for quite some time.
> This isn't new.
Just because it is old doesn't make it a good user experience.
It's not coincidental that the ability to do so has been actively limited by so many browsers (with opt-out forever options in some cases).
It's not modal (like `alert`), it doesn't steal focus, at least not on any browser I've used.
Disable it.
It's a feature some people like and use. I like getting notifications from some services I use without needing to keep a browser window open on that page to get notified. And I like not having to download and install yet another flipping app to get that feature.
I cant imagine a service that you frequent enough to want push notifications but not enough that you would be willing to install a native app for a smoother experience.
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