Mozilla has been working hard to make sure that the Firefox browser stays ahead of its competition by introducing a number of advanced features. Earlier in the week, Mozilla announced the release of Firefox 10 which introduced a number of tools helpful for web developers. Now, the organization seems to be focusing on consumers. It was recently announced that the Mozilla Firefox web browser is all set to receive a new push notification system which will enable the users to get notifications from certain websites even if they are not currently open in Firefox. There will also be an option to relay the notification to the user’s mobile device.
Prior to this, native mobile apps provided the feature of push notifications. However, this involved running multiple applications simultaneously in the background, hogging battery power and slowing down the system. The new Firefox push notifications system is expected to provide stiff competition to standard browser clients. The technical details and workings of the push notification system have been explained in a blog post by Mozilla software developer Jeff Balogh. He also posted a sample JavaScript code which is a part of the notification application.
Push notifications are essentially messages sent by online services to users when the site is not open in the browser. These messages notify the user of any new content or updates, or in the case of social networking sites, about any recent developments that may interest the user. Many Android and iOS devices come with native support for push notifications, and push email has already been a feature of Android and iOS since the very beginning.
For Firefox’s system to work, a notification service has to be first hosted by Mozilla. Every user will also need to have a unique URL endpoint for the notification service to work effectively. Of course, many analysts point out that there is also an increased possibility of spam networks using this system. To prevent these spam notifications, Firefox will come with a JavaScript API that allows the user to select websites which will be able to send push notifications. When the user provides the authorization, the browser will provide the selected websites with the unique URL endpoint. The website will send the notification request to the URL endpoint which will be relayed by the notification service to the user instantly.
