[webkit-dev] Request for position on Badging API

[Matt Giuca]

Thanks for the replies. Folding both Dean and Ryosuke's emails into one.

On Mon, 17 Feb 2020 at 03:03, Dean Jackson <dino at apple.com> wrote:

> Not speaking for all of WebKit, and definitely not all of Apple, but I
> think this seems like a good idea.
>
> I'm not sure I get the distinction between app badges and document badges
> though. I'd also like to see some specification text describing how the
> browser should ignore multiple set/clear operations executed in rapid
> succession (e.g. to create a blinking badge) - maybe the limit is one badge
> operation per minute or something?
>

Good suggestion. Filed an issue: https://github.com/WICG/badging/issues/68

Also, given that the main use case for this would be alerting the user to a
> notification, it seems like it should be able to link it directly to that.
> This would provide the ability for a push notification to trigger the badge
> without ever firing up the page context.
>

I'm not sure what you mean by "link directly to that". We've deliberately
specified this as separate to notifications (since you may or may not want
the badge to be set without one). If you want to show a notification and a
badge at the same time, you can use both APIs together. If you want to have
a push notification set the badge when the service worker runs, you can do
that (but as has been discussed at length:
https://github.com/WICG/badging/issues/28, you *can't* currently set a
badge without a notification from a push message).

On Mon, 17 Feb 2020 at 03:49, Ryosuke Niwa <rniwa at webkit.org> wrote:

> For the record, we have two concerns raised internally at Apple:
>  * The integration of this API with push service worker would require
> running scripts in order to update the badge. This will pose a serious
> power consumption issue.
>

That isn't a feature of the current proposal. The spec doesn't give service
worker push any new capabilities that it didn't already have (in
particular, if the browser requires the push message to show a
notification, that is still true; you simply cannot set a badge from a push
message without showing a notification). See
https://github.com/WICG/badging/issues/28 and
https://github.com/WICG/badging/blob/master/explainer.md#background-updates.

This is something we've given some thought to. We (Google) would like to
eventually see it possible to set a badge in the background without a
notification. But the power consumption and privacy issues are well known,
and at this stage, it is not being proposed.


>  * We don’t want every website to start using this API to increase
> “engagement”.
>

Do you mean as a way of drawing additional attention to itself? Well, the
setAppBadge API can only be used by installed applications, so that doesn't
apply to every site the user might visit. And the user agent / OS can
provide the user with UI to suppress badges on a per-app basis if an app is
too spammy. The setClientBadge API could be used by any website to draw
attention, but the user agent should make the badge sufficiently subtle
that this is no more abusive than a favicon, which can already be used to
show a pseudo-badge.


>
> - R. Niwa
>
> On Sun, Jan 19, 2020 at 16:27 Matt Giuca <mgiuca at chromium.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi WebKit team,
>>
>> I have previously proposed the Badging API (
>> https://github.com/WICG/badging) to provide websites with a mechanism to
>> set a badge (a small dot or number) on the current document's tab, or for
>> installed applications, on the app icon in the system shelf or home screen.
>>
>> Would WebKit / Safari be interested in implementing the API now or in the
>> future?
>>
>> We are planning to ship in Chromium soon:
>>
>> https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/fHc49JNFTAU/m/bJD25Yr7CAAJ
>>
>> Regards
>>
>>
>> Matt Giuca
>> _______________________________________________
>> webkit-dev mailing list
>> webkit-dev at lists.webkit.org
>> https://lists.webkit.org/mailman/listinfo/webkit-dev
>>
> --
> - R. Niwa
>
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