Firefox/Push Notifications

Overview

Push notifications is a a collection of features, webAPIs, and servers enabling web applications to efficiently notify client browsers of an event. Ideal use cases are a messaging, email, calendar, and games.

High Level Design

Push Notification contains the following technologies:

Notification API

WebAPI landed in Fx22. Can be used without push and service workers, but will be a popular use case.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/notification

Service Workers

Service workers is the ability for your browser to run a script in the background enabling offline applications, background processing, and push notifications.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/ServiceWorker

Push WebAPI

Web DOM API that enables a website to subscribe a client, upon granting permission, to send events to the client. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Push_API

Push Server

Mozilla hosted server that brokers the registration and sending of push events from web app servers to clients. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Services/SimplePushServer

http://autopush.readthedocs.org/en/latest/api.html

Milestones

M1: Targeting Fx42

• Initial implementation of Push WebAPI
• Currently no changes to the existing Notification UI
  • Fx42 Notification UI uplifts requested for improved user control exposed due to the Push WebAPI
  • bug tree TBA
• Supports service workers, enabling push events when all tabs are closed.
• Support for Android or iOS in M2
• Push event contains no data at this time.

M1.1: Server side policies for large scale usage.

M2: Fx43/44

• Improved Notification management and user control features.

Future

• Use HTTP2 to conform to W3C WebPush spec.

TEAM / RACI

• Product: Bill Maggs
• Technical Program Manager: Edwin Wong

Platform

• Dev Manager: Doug T.

Demos and Testing

Requires Firefox 42 or later

• http://johnme-gcm.appspot.com/
• https://simple-push-demo.appspot.com/
• http://edmoz.github.io/push-notification-test/