As well as launching a new update process and add-on synchronisation to their Firefox browser.
Mozilla has also unveiled this week a new technology they have been
developing that will enable websites to notify visitors that updates
have been made to the site.
The new Mozilla API currently being developed works
like this: The process starts with the Web
site getting a URL where it
can send notifications to the user. The URL points to the notification
service, which is a secret between the user and the site. Then, the site
sends a notification to the service. The service then delivers the
message to the browser.
The
new Push API notifications being developed by Mozilla are an easy way
for websites to send small messages to users when the user is not
visiting the site. Jeff Balogh explains:
“The notification API
lives at navigator.notification. First we find the right API object and
check that it exists. If it’s there we ask the user for permission to
send notifications using notification.requestRemotePermission(), which
returns an object we use to watch for events.
Once the notification is in the system, we’ll deliver it to the recipient on all the devices they have Firefox installed, but we’ll try not to show duplicate notifications on different devices.”
iOS
and Android devices already currently support their own push
notification services, but Mozilla are looking to make notifications
available to the whole web. You scan find out more information over on
the Jeff Balogh website.
