

Gmail gets desktop notifications (if you're a Chrome user) - bradmccarty
http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/01/27/google-rolling-out-desktop-notifications-for-gmail-via-chrome/

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jjcm
Just noticed this update to gmail a few minutes ago. Looks like it's a webkit
feature though, and only chrome specific for the time being.

Check some example code here:
<http://www.210computing.com/google/chrome_notifications.html>

And the draft API here: [http://www.chromium.org/developers/design-
documents/desktop-...](http://www.chromium.org/developers/design-
documents/desktop-notifications/api-specification)

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bradmccarty
Noticed that, as well. Interesting that the blog post from Google says that
they are trying to make this a feature of the "standard Web platform."

[http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/desktop-
notifications-...](http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/desktop-
notifications-for-emails-and.html)

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woogley
Interesting timing. tdfx just asked for this 8 hours ago.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2143881>

What powerful influence!

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albemuth
They should have gone for growl integration on OS X, that's why I disabled it.

~~~
X-Istence
Growl would have been infinitely better in that I can then set up what the
notifications look like, how long they linger on my screen and the font size
and whatnot.

Not sure why didn't go with Growl instead of rolling their own...

~~~
gmurphy
Growl is great for all the reasons you state, but Chrome doesn't use it
because Growl doesn't allow HTML, and it would require us to ship Chrome with
Growl for all the users who don't have it.

HTML notifications can be powerful because they allow you to include live
content (video of the person attempting to video chat with you) and actions
(e.g. archive, reply buttons) if you choose.

It's not inconceivable that someone could write something that suppressed and
stripped the text out of a Chrome notification and presented it in a Growl
notification.

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garply
Does this work on Linux?

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daviding
I haven't seen it on Gmail and Chrome 10.0.642.2 dev yet, but the underlying
webkit does work on Ubuntu et al.

You can test the feature in Chrome here:

<http://slides.html5rocks.com/#notifications-api>

edit: Just got the permission banner in gmail now - works fine.

