I really, really, really wish iOS allowed push notifications through Safari. So many PWA ideas I want to explore are instantly stifled by that omission.
Is there no alternative way?
Things you can do with a browser in 2020
331–340 of 387 posts
Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
Try talking to some developer relations people from the Google Web team, Mozzila, Microsoft etc. They're all very receptive to feature requests. It absolutely isn't a one way street.
> They're all very receptive to feature requests. I think that's part of the problem.
Being receptive to hearing them is very different to actually implementing them.
Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's fantastic about a vendor intentionally ignoring multiple standards, in favor of their own walled-garden? You might be ignoring the wishes of actual users when you say it's "fantastic."
I'm only speaking as a user. As a user I don't want push notifications from websites. I know there are some exceptions (like messengers), but really, those should be apps because Apples centralised push messaging system is better for my battery life.
Ok, but your preference isn't everyone else's! You can disable the pop-up asking you for push notifications on all relevant browsers, afaik.
Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
In terms of development effort, maintaining a browser fork that merely disables these features seems pretty easy. If you think users would prefer that, why not make one? I personally don't think it would take off, because I think most user attitudes range from "want these features" to "ambivalence". But if you're so certain, why not try?
Why does it require a fork? Having an advanced settings page with checkboxes for each of these web features seems straightforward and not overly confusing to normal users.
> fork?
Because it runs contrary to maintainer’s interests?
Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Chat is probably one of the only functionalities that are still better served by an ad-hoc app Yes, actually, IRC works better for chat, I think. Actually, it is probably true of some other stuff too, such as many kind of multiplayer games; you could use a telnet (or SSH) session.
I guess you're trying to be sarcastic, but it's not working
Actually I am not trying to be sarcastic.
Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Then you're out of step with what users want these days. We hear this pretty often without any evidence. He is a user, you are a user, that makes two opinions. I think the reality that companies set the rules and people just swallow what they get because alternatives require huge efforts. We also heard that users want large tiles that are all over their desktop with zero functionality.
In terms of development effort, maintaining a browser fork that merely disables these features seems pretty easy. If you think users would prefer that, why not make one? I personally don't think it would take off, because I think most user attitudes range from "want these features" to "ambivalence". But if you're so certain, why not try?
Maintaining a fork that does that isn’t trivial, but it’s certainly doable by any one engineer.
However, maintaining such a fork is not the only prerequisite for it “taking off”. It may well be that my great uncle would love that feature - but how are you going to get his attention when several vendors are already spending millions of dollars in marketing/design/etc to influence which browser he uses?
Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it depends a lot on age and level of eyesight. I've never once felt eye strain from looking at a dark theme, and if a room is even somewhat dark then a blindingly white screen gives me a headache. I can always fiddle with my brightness as needed for different situations, at least on my phone, but that's kind of a pain. On a desktop monitor it's usually a significantly bigger pain.
I've always heard that you should use an off-white or off-black, and that CSS like #000 or #FFF for backgrounds is a no-no.
There's no real consensus. Try this site: https://contrastrebellion.com/
Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
What? Running a native desktop app exposes a much larger attack surface than opening a webpage.
> native desktop app exposes a much larger attack surface If we're talking about code executed as a result of, say, buffer overflow attacks, then the impact is the same both for the native app and for the browser. The latter, however, has way much more places where that overflow could happen! And they still happen, security updates for the browsers get pushed all the time. (And we're not even talking about the world…
Not to mention that native apps can be properly reviewed and vetted by Linux distributions.
And have a tiny codebase compared to a browser. And even tinier compared to a browser + all the potentially hostile javascript, css, html, sng, png out there.
And run in native sandboxes or external sandboxes like firejail.
Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020
#339As a user, so many of these I wish did NOT exist. E.g: Push Notifications, Banners, Web Share, Contacts, Page Visibility, Badging. Uncertain about USB, Bluetooth, Locks, Keyboard Lock, and Native File System. I don't want my browser doing those things.
Then you're out of step with what users want these days. Nothing wrong with that! But to take an example, when I hit a share button on a page I want to see the native share box, not some hideous iframed monstrosity that only works with Facebook. So I want Web Share. And I don't want to download an entire native app just so that I can receive a push alert when my food order is on the way, a web site works much better…
I think browser product teams are out of step with what users want these days. It is easy to confuse the browser ecosystem with users. Or even claim that the browser ecosystem is good for users, and therefore doing things to improve the ecosystem _is_ doing things the user wants. In truth, the user just wants to see the web page and have the browser get out of the way. You know who does that well? Native. Identity and payments are now _solved_ there. The web is still trying to figure out this out and probably never will. Too busy working on things that don't matter. Then something like AMP shows up, which actually builds _on_ the ecosystem, in _favor_ of the user experience, and people blow up about it. The browser ecosystem is sort of in a sad state, leadership wise.
Re: Things you can do with a browser in 2020
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
At least with the push notifications I can get notified about my stuff. On the iPhone they require paying apple $100 a year which almost ensures most will be ads.
Do you mean the proprietary Apple push notifications in Safari? In this case I've only seen it ever once (as opposed to seeing the "normal" notifications on pretty much every shitty blogspam website) so it seems like the 100$ acts like a good filter against BS notifications.
I mean whatever Firefox does. I’ve never once gotten spam because sites can’t send you notifications unless you opt into them (so it’s more like a battery friendly super fast RSS replacement.)