Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Favicon alert bubbles

tommoor.github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 65 posts

Re: Show HN: Favicon alert bubbles

#41

Post by raphman »

rplnt wrote: post #37
tommoor wrote: post #2

Tinycon is a javascript library that allows easy manipulation of the favicon to include nice looking alert bubbles. This means that users can pin your site and still see when their attention is needed! It's been done before, but in my opinion not in a way aesthetically pleasing enough for production use. This library also falls back to the standard number in page title approach for browsers that do no support canvas…

> This library also falls back to the standard number in page title approach for browsers that do no support canvas / dynamic favicons. I use Opera and it used fallback although favicon notification works for me in GMail or Meebo. You might check that out.

Yes, Opera 11.61 masking as Firefox correctly shows the favicon notifications.

Re: Show HN: Favicon alert bubbles

#42

Post by raphman »

tommoor wrote: post #40
jacobr wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a neat project, but you should really use feature detection rather than UA string sniffing. Both IE9 and Opera have canvas support, but they are not supported. I am pretty sure Opera has dynamic favicon support as well, not sure about IE.

The library does use feature detection to detect canvas support, browser sniffing is only to fix some small rendering differences between browsers.

Opera 11.61 masking as Firefox correctly shows the favicon notifications, however.

Re: Show HN: Favicon alert bubbles

#43

Post by lnanek »

wilhelm wrote: post #38

This is cool, but why does it only work in some browsers?

JS for what is normally an image seems pretty far out there, wouldn't surprise me if not many browsers supported yet. And JS itself often needs to be tested and tweaked on many browsers before it works on all.

Personally, I would have just implemented in PHP. I already have a pretty trivial PHP script I use to overlay a site logo on images that are direct linked instead of accessed on one of my image serving sites. Although browsers might cache the favicon excessively even with the proper caching headers, would have to test. But as far as browsers would be concerned it would just be another image (even if it is generated dynamically by PHP and image magick the first time and only copied to output from a file cache after).

Re: Show HN: Favicon alert bubbles

#45

Post by wilhelm »

lnanek wrote: post #43
wilhelm wrote: post #38

This is cool, but why does it only work in some browsers?

JS for what is normally an image seems pretty far out there, wouldn't surprise me if not many browsers supported yet. And JS itself often needs to be tested and tweaked on many browsers before it works on all. Personally, I would have just implemented in PHP. I already have a pretty trivial PHP script I use to overlay a site logo on images that are direct linked instead of accessed on one of my image serving sites. A…

Well, this works in more browsers: http://www.p01.org/releases/DEFENDER_of_the_favicon/

Re: Show HN: Favicon alert bubbles

#46

Post by tommoor »

jacobr wrote: post #39
tommoor wrote: post #2

Tinycon is a javascript library that allows easy manipulation of the favicon to include nice looking alert bubbles. This means that users can pin your site and still see when their attention is needed! It's been done before, but in my opinion not in a way aesthetically pleasing enough for production use. This library also falls back to the standard number in page title approach for browsers that do no support canvas…

It's a neat project, but you should really use feature detection rather than UA string sniffing. Both IE9 and Opera have canvas support, but they are not supported. I am pretty sure Opera has dynamic favicon support as well, not sure about IE.

Ok, i've updated this so the only UA sniffing is to discount Safari as it appears to have all the required support but doesn't allow dynamic favicons. I'm quite sure there isn't a way to feature detect this.

Opera now works a treat :)

Re: Show HN: Favicon alert bubbles

#49

Post by jacobr »

tommoor wrote: post #46
jacobr wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a neat project, but you should really use feature detection rather than UA string sniffing. Both IE9 and Opera have canvas support, but they are not supported. I am pretty sure Opera has dynamic favicon support as well, not sure about IE.

Ok, i've updated this so the only UA sniffing is to discount Safari as it appears to have all the required support but doesn't allow dynamic favicons. I'm quite sure there isn't a way to feature detect this. Opera now works a treat :)

Indeed it does, thanks!
Post reply on HN