As you might have noticed when visiting this page, website visitors who are surfing the web with the Safari web browser on Mac OS Mavericks are asked whether they want to receive notifications on future page updates. If you belong to this user group and opt-in for Safari Push Notifications, you will receive an alert as soon as I publish a new article or photo. The notification finally appears in your notification center on the Mac.
I promise not to overdo it with my blog posts and photos and I will not send you spam bombs. In Safari, you can go to Settings > Notifications to see an overview of all push notifications you previously opted-in to.
I have implemented the notification system for this site. I understand that I only reach about 2 % of all web users who visit my site. There are however similar notification features available for other browsers and I will gradually incorporate similar functions for the users of these browsers.
Whilst implementing the notification feature I noticed a possible security breach. Further on, I have some thoughts on improving the system. As an end user, I have a hard time to understand why I can only subscribe to notifications on my mac. I am unable to opt-in for similar notifications on my other iOS devices. This is particularly odd, as Apple is typically widely praised for its consistent user experience. However, this is not the case with website push notifications.
Let’s assume that I activate the notification function on an airline’s website, as I expect that I be notified of any changes to my reserved flight. However, once I leave the house and while I am on my trip with my mobile iOS devices, I will not be notified of gate changes or any other information that might be beneficial for my trip, unless the website would automatically synchronize the data with a user account in the airline’s app- So if the airline’s company website would send me a push notification, I would only be able to see them on my Mac next time I boot it up. There is clearly room for improvement for v2 of the API.