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Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

blog.nightly.mozilla.org

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Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#191

Post by erfgh »

parkersweb wrote: post #162

Hmmm - I can see how this is a good thing for the notification permission (there are far too many news/blog sites starting with that request) - but it looks from what they're saying that microphone/camera will still use the old method. Won't that be a bit confusing? As an aside I've often wondered why cookie permissions couldn't be moved to a similar model? It would create a much more consistent experience instead of…

Use this for the cookie permission popup nonsense: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/i-dont-care-a...

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#192

Post by _ea1k »

LeonM wrote: post #133

Serious question though: has anyone here ever used the notifications for anything other than web based IM (slack, whatsapp)? I think the use case for legit notifications is very small, thus the UI should be an opt-in, rather than an intrusive pop-up. I never understood why browser makers gave it such a prominent UI, and of course in this attention seeking market it was bound to be abused. The new UI that Firefox is s…

The issue is that people will overlook it on IM sites now and then complain that there is no way to get notifications without an app.

So, the browser vendors worked around this by making it prominent. I think the interface was actually pretty reasonable for these legitimate use cases.

Unfortunately, reasonable tools that capture traffic will always be abused.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#193

Post by phkahler »

zaroth wrote: post #21

Downgrading the prompt to a non-popup icon in the address bar unless it follows a user action sounds like the perfect balance. This won’t entirely stop sites which are properly trying to request the permission in the worst case, and the navbar icon is unobtrusive enough that if it gets spammed it’s no big deal. Actually I think it makes sense to persistently show the notification icon in the navbar once the permissio…

>> Downgrading the prompt to a non-popup icon in the address bar unless it follows a user action sounds like the perfect balance.

I disagree. There should be no UI for these. A site should essentially say "click here to enable XXX" as part of the page. Anything else is essentially a pop-up. I don't want buttons or controls in my browser to be controlled by a web site. BTW that includes the back button - why browsers ever allowed sites to take control from the user is beyond me.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#194

Post by alex_duf »

LeonM wrote: post #133

Serious question though: has anyone here ever used the notifications for anything other than web based IM (slack, whatsapp)? I think the use case for legit notifications is very small, thus the UI should be an opt-in, rather than an intrusive pop-up. I never understood why browser makers gave it such a prominent UI, and of course in this attention seeking market it was bound to be abused. The new UI that Firefox is s…

Our deployment tool at work sends you a notification if the deployment failed

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#195

Post by beatgammit »

valtism wrote: post #54
CuriousCosmic wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even then, notification permission should not be requested without some sort of prior input from the user. A simple red bell icon with the hover text "enable notifications" would work so much better than the user being assaulted with the dialogue box right away. It really is a shame to see how terribly these permission requests have been abused, especially by news sites. I see this is a push for engagement by managem…

Yeah, it should require user interaction to trigger the prompt. In fact, some of the better websites do this already.

This should be the same for nearly everything, like:

- playing video/audio automatically - location access - direct GPU access

In fact, it would probably make sense to include all scripting (JavaScript and web assembly).

To make this suck less, the website should be able to request multiple permissions at once, with each permission able to be granted individually and websites able to put a short reason why each is being requested. Those permissions should show up in an easy to use menu for each site, like the TLS info button. Perhaps that same menu is the only way to enable/disable, so no popups, and all permissions are disabled by default.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#197

Post by ehnto »

teekert wrote: post #90

It's insane that the two visible options are "Not now" and "Allow notifications" while 99 percent of the time I want never bother me again, in fact disable this feature entirely. I clicked yes exactly 3 times (my own Nextcloud instance, Protonmail and Whatsapp web), I'd be happy to do some more clicking to enable those at the "cost" of never being bugged again.

It's such a passive agressive tactic. It boggles the mind that it's the browser vendors that implemented it. Google spent years blocking popups to the point where I never get them anymore, which is amazing, but clearly they learned a few nasty tricks along the way.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#198

Post by jacurtis »

LeonM wrote: post #133

Serious question though: has anyone here ever used the notifications for anything other than web based IM (slack, whatsapp)? I think the use case for legit notifications is very small, thus the UI should be an opt-in, rather than an intrusive pop-up. I never understood why browser makers gave it such a prominent UI, and of course in this attention seeking market it was bound to be abused. The new UI that Firefox is s…

Gmail and G-Suite (professoinal Gmail) allow useful notifications. But those notifications only popup while a Gmail tab is open (such as in the background or not visible). So I like to open gmail while I am waiting for an email, I will get the notifications, can read the email, then close that tab and notifications are no longer arriving. One of the very few use cases for notifications that I appreciate. I have the same setup for Slack & Discord online versions.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#199

Post by Wowfunhappy »

phkahler wrote: post #193
zaroth wrote: post #21

Downgrading the prompt to a non-popup icon in the address bar unless it follows a user action sounds like the perfect balance. This won’t entirely stop sites which are properly trying to request the permission in the worst case, and the navbar icon is unobtrusive enough that if it gets spammed it’s no big deal. Actually I think it makes sense to persistently show the notification icon in the navbar once the permissio…

>> Downgrading the prompt to a non-popup icon in the address bar unless it follows a user action sounds like the perfect balance. I disagree. There should be no UI for these. A site should essentially say "click here to enable XXX" as part of the page. Anything else is essentially a pop-up. I don't want buttons or controls in my browser to be controlled by a web site. BTW that includes the back button - why browsers…

> A site should essentially say "click here to enable XXX" as part of the page.

Then the site will just make their own annoying popup asking to enable notifications. By giving UI control to the browser, the browser vendor can decide how forceful it should be.

Re: Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox

#200

Post by kadendogthing »

phkahler wrote: post #193
zaroth wrote: post #21

Downgrading the prompt to a non-popup icon in the address bar unless it follows a user action sounds like the perfect balance. This won’t entirely stop sites which are properly trying to request the permission in the worst case, and the navbar icon is unobtrusive enough that if it gets spammed it’s no big deal. Actually I think it makes sense to persistently show the notification icon in the navbar once the permissio…

>> Downgrading the prompt to a non-popup icon in the address bar unless it follows a user action sounds like the perfect balance. I disagree. There should be no UI for these. A site should essentially say "click here to enable XXX" as part of the page. Anything else is essentially a pop-up. I don't want buttons or controls in my browser to be controlled by a web site. BTW that includes the back button - why browsers…

>why browsers ever allowed sites to take control from the user is beyond me.

Because users wanted sites to be able to control that?

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