Live data from Hacker News

Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

blog.nightly.mozilla.org

11–20 of 268 posts

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#11

god forbid you leave firefox set to never remember history, you don't get the option to block sites forever. So every time you hit a reddit link it will gleefully present you with a prompt about notification permissions.

It seems to have gotten much worse on reddit lately. I would not be surprised if that is what pushed them to start to do something about it.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#13
I feel like Solution 1 is pretty close to what I see as the "solution".

I think for commonly requested permissions that are not commonly accepted, they should just use a smaller, more discreet icon for notifying the user; one that doesn't hang down over the chrome and block/cover up the site. That way, it can be easily ignored.

It should be more obvious than the one they're using in that solution. Maybe something equivalent to an icon next to the refresh button or something. The text icon they had in #1 was probably /too/ easy to ignore.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#16
post #13

I feel like Solution 1 is pretty close to what I see as the "solution". I think for commonly requested permissions that are not commonly accepted, they should just use a smaller, more discreet icon for notifying the user; one that doesn't hang down over the chrome and block/cover up the site. That way, it can be easily ignored. It should be more obvious than the one they're using in that solution. Maybe something equ…

As someone with "not-so-tech-savvy" users on my website, this is bound to get ignored a lot. I have seen screenshots of my users (when they need support) and they dont even click "Okay" on the Cookie bar (to accept cookies and stuff) and / or any notification on the website (Not the Push Notification).

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#17
post #6

Websites should not ask users for permission notifications. It only annoys the people using it. It is a bad idea! If users are interested enough in your content, they will find a way to opt-in for notifications like email; an opt-in for notifications button or even RSS. Why would website owners assume that users want to get notifications only after 5 seconds of visiting a random site?

Some of them do have legitimate uses, like chat apps (messages.android.com for example). Otherwise though I do agree that they are a fairly bad idea.

There are certainly a few legitimate use cases. There should be an enable desktop notifications button or something similar in those cases.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#18
post #6

Websites should not ask users for permission notifications. It only annoys the people using it. It is a bad idea! If users are interested enough in your content, they will find a way to opt-in for notifications like email; an opt-in for notifications button or even RSS. Why would website owners assume that users want to get notifications only after 5 seconds of visiting a random site?

Some of them do have legitimate uses, like chat apps (messages.android.com for example). Otherwise though I do agree that they are a fairly bad idea.

Yea gitter is the only website I've given this permission to. It makes the user experience much better and so far they haven't abused it.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#20

god forbid you leave firefox set to never remember history, you don't get the option to block sites forever. So every time you hit a reddit link it will gleefully present you with a prompt about notification permissions.

Wow thank you for pointing that out. I have always set my browsers to never remember history, if I want to remember it, I will use a bookmark. Consequently Reddit mobile will totally spam me, making it even more unusable than before.

Alternatively you can workaround the issue by telling firefox to delete history on close. This will allow you to block notifications per-session.
Post reply on HN