Are there any JavaScript library for cross browser desktop notification?

49
votes

I know W3C just publish their draft version of Web Notification to notify user. So, there is no browser that implement this method in their current or latest build browser.

Web Notifications Overview

After I search a lot of webs for finding all possible desktop notification in most browser.I found any 2 major browser that should support this.

1.Google Chrome and Webkit-based browser

Notification of Windows
(source: google.com)

Notification of Mac
(source: google.com)

Notification of Linux
(source: google.com)

We can use native Desktop notification function to show message like the following picture.

More infomation: The Chromium Projects - Desktop Notifications

2.Internet Explorer

For IE 5.5+, we can use createPopup function to notify use like in Google Chrome but it's much flexible more that Google Chrome.

Create Popup

More information: CreatePopup Method on MSDN

Moreover, if we pin website to Windows 7 taskbar, we can use overlay icon to notify user too.

Overlay Icon
(source: microsoft.com)

More information: IE9, Site Specific Browsers, and adding your own Jump List Items to Pinned Tabs

Other browser

I think we can use Pines Notify jQuery plugin to create in-browser notification.

Pines Notify

Or do you have any desktop notification library or idea for suggesting me?

Thanks,

PS. If it does not have fine library, I will create it with myself.

Update I

Since IE8, it does not allow us to display popup outside current browser. For example, when IE is minimized, all popups are not displayed. So, Google Chrome is only one browser that has fully web notification API (FF 4 also has non-documented web notification API but it not work for now).

5
cross-browsernotificationsjavascript
Have you started and will it be open source? – Rob Olmos
It will be shared on GitHub soon. But I got some problem about IE9 behaviour that it does not allow to display popup or modaless dialog when browser is minimized. – Soul_Master
pines is only good for in-site notification. It won't be visible while you are browsing something else. – syockit
Note that the createPopup() IE method will NOT work if the page is blurred (not in focus) when it occurs. If createPopup is called when you're on another tab you will get an "unspecified error". – Oscar Godson
@Soul_Master Did you work on it then? If yes, can you share the github url for the same? Thanks! – w2lame

5 Answers

1
votes

I don't know of a cross-browser lib; but desktop-notifications are coming to Mozilla Firefox post 4.0 as well. They're implemented in trunk already: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=573588

Though apparently this new feature won't get included in FF 4.0: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=594543

But in the long term, an api related to but different from the webkit will be available.

Not sure about opera, however.

0
votes

I doubt that there are any cross-browser desktop notification javascript libraries, because those notifications are vendor specific implementations, made by the web browsers themselves, and not the W3C or WHATWG.

CreatePopup looks like it was made for enterprise web applications as it never took prominence, and Google wants web applications to replace desktop applications. Jumplists are just a way to provide Windows 7 functionality into IE9, but it's not a move to push to cloud computing.

0
votes

I know this is old but Push.js allows for cross-browser desktop notification.

Also, this is 2020, you can use the native Notification API in most browsers.

Make sure you check the Browser compatibility section.

-1
votes

The dojo toolkit http://www.dojotoolkit.org contains a control called "Toaster" in its dojox package, but this is a notification inside the browser window and does not follow the web notifications specification. Maybe it is also a solution for your webapp.