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Firefox's Web Push Notification System Announced
eldavojohn writes "Describing Notifications as 'somewhere between email and IM,' Mozilla has announced this push technology as a way to receive notifications from websites without having to keep them open in your browser — as well as receiving them on your mobile device. A JavaScript API reveals early interface ideas by the team. This core concept is not new — both Google and Apple have their own push notification systems for Android and iOS respectively. However, 'It's important to note that this push notification system is distinct from the existing desktop notification mechanisms that are already defined in pending standards. The desktop notifications that websites like GMail and Seesmic Web display to Chrome users, for example, will only work when the website is left open in a tab. Mozilla's push notification system moves beyond that limitation.' Mozilla is attempting to take push notifications to the entire web for any website to use."
Microsoft did this with WebSlices in Internet Explorer 8.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/cc956158%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
As you can tell from how prominent they are, this idea really took off among web users.
but i feel like we're back in the late 90's/early 2000's with all the different web technologies from different companies, almost to the point of having to add the old "best viewed in derp derp browser" messages to websites. i know this sort of thing is necessary to move things along, but i kinda hate this limbo phase where we have all kinds of new/interesting/exciting/annoying technologies, and no standards yet to bring them together. that's my rant, ill be quiet now.
Apart from making browser and email client, Mozilla is contributing a lot to bring more functionality to web. The good thing is that they do it in a very open way. But they lack popular web services to push the features. e.g. Google brought these APIs to Chrome and Gmail implemented them. While how many websites actually honor do not track option is still not known. Mozilla should also try to find collaborations with major web services providers to make the features happen.
How is this different from PointCast?
I never really saw the advantage of push technology over lightweight "pull" technology like RSS feeds. And who really wants desktop notifications when they're not using a program meant to read that kind of info? It's not like memory's so starved we have to close all our apps when they're not in use. We do that only when we don't want them bothering us.
That's pull, no push. Pushing is much more efficient.
A "pull" notification requires the client to poke a server and check for content. This is typically done on a set interval.
A "push" notification requires an open connection to push content through. The client acts as a server.
Pushing is only more efficient if you're the server or you have a device with such a shitty battery.
Desktop and laptop users don't give a flying fuck about the battery use required to poke at a server. The only ones who care are people on phones / tablets / nettops / other fad devices. And they all have "apps".
The bottom line is that the client should NOT have to maintain a connection the server can inject into.
It's backwards and retarded behavior for a web browser to maintain open connections to remote servers after a page is closed.
You might as well just elav the tab open.
There's a reason why no one uses IE's web slices.