Push notification of new reading list entries

[azurelunatic]

Title:
Push notification of new reading list entries

Area:
reading page, this is the future

Summary:
A notice informing you when you have new entries on your reading list so you know when to refresh it. This could be at the top of the page, in the page title, or wherever else the creator of your style wants to put it.

Description:
Like Gmail, Twitter, and probably more of the flock of post-web-2.0 services out there, it would be nifty to be able to have a push notification to your reading page that would tell you when you needed to refresh.

It would obviously cost some are-we-there-yet from the reading page, and would require scripting, so it wouldn't be useful to all users. However, it could save on needless refreshing of the reading page, and thus might be a net savings for both the user and Dreamwidth.

Poll #4237 Push notification of new reading list entries

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 46

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
20 (43.5%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
13 (28.3%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
4 (8.7%)

(I have no opinion)
7 (15.2%)

(Other: please comment)
2 (4.3%)

Comments

[senmut]

I like the idea, but I think I would want it to be a feature I can turn off...I have some journals I don't necessarily care to know about the reading page even while logged into them.

[instantramen]

+1 to being able to turn it off.

[feathertail]

+1! I'd like push notification, though.

[zeborah]

I'd even say it should be opt-in.

[denise]

Please check opt-in vs opt-out in dw_biz's Biz FAQs -- opt-in is a horrible choice for discoverability, since no matter what you do, a large percentage of your users will miss it.

[triadruid]

True, but I'm also worried about server load - those with the desire to see EVERY POST AS SOON AS IT ARRIVES will be refreshing their friends page more often with this... won't they?

[matgb]

Opposite, normally. Those that want to see every post immediately already refresh their friends page all the time.

This will mean they only do so when there's something new, as it'll tell them. Of course, there'll be some who won't believe there's nothing new yet and still hit refresh, but...

[azurelunatic]

Also, if the check-frequency can be made to hit the sweet spot between often enough that it annoys the server and an old computer, and too infrequently that someone would refresh anyway...

+1

[zaluzianskya]

With changes = This

[azurelunatic]

My thought was only while actually on the reading page, rather than on other journal pages.

[senmut]

And see, I don't usually sit on my reading page once I have made it through my circle once...it's whatever last DW page I had open was.

[allen]

The only reason for the 'with changes' is that I'd want to go ahead and soup it up a bit and add in some more information (the journal and title of the new entries, for instance--they could go in a sidebar).

[feathertail]

Sidebar's not needed, I think ... just maybe a pop-up that says something like "New post - POST NAME by USER." +1 to this otherwise!

[feathertail]

Push notification would be awesome! Now we just need some way to mark things as read.

[msilverstar]

I miss the ability to see and read unread comments so much! Other systems with that feature have much better conversations, instead of trailing off or having only two people go back and forth.

[feathertail]

Wait, LiveJournal (or Dreamwidth) used to have a feature like that? o.o

[msilverstar]

No, forums and other conferencing systems do though.

[feathertail]

Ah yes ... yes, something like that would be neat.>.>

[turlough]

The reason for my "Other" is that I think this could be both incredibly annoying and incredibly useful and I really can't make up my mind.

[azurelunatic]

I am most interested in knowing about which parts would be incredibly annoying, so perhaps there is a way to de-annoyance them.

[noracharles]

I like having a number in the title, so I can see it on the tab.

Having things pop up or move around or cover any part of the screen or change appearance or slow down my computer would be incredibly annoying.

[turlough]

What noracharles said. It would be terribly annoying to have something pop up on my screen or for the screen to suddenly change in some way without input from me.

[jeeps]

adore this idea. I would love to be able to just keep my reading page open and have a little "(1)" or whatever show up on the tab when there's a new post. I'd definitely want it to respect filters, though, so I wouldn't get a notification and then have nothing show up when I refresh.

[cesy]

+1 to respecting filters.

[ninetydegrees]

This.

[healingmirth]

I voted yes for as-suggested. I'd be happy with something as simple as a line saying there's *something* new.

But! I am also okay with the fancier options (subjects and whatnot) suggested above as changes. Maybe there's a way that could be introduced as a style module thing? (Note my total lack of knowledge of how anything behind the shiny colors works...)

[azurelunatic]

Ooo, yes, I like the idea of a module. Combines the best of "give it to me now" and "AIII DO NOT MOVE ME FROM MY DAMNED PAGE, I WAS READING THAT YOU BASTARD"

[susanreads]

+1

[archane]

The only way I could tolerate push notifications is if they were opt-out, and opting out meant that none of the related script ran in the background, ever.

Push notifications can be useful. However, I run an older computer and the scripts tend to slow things down noticeably for me. As a result, I will almost always close out those pages entirely and come back to them ... sometime later when I think of it, maybe. In comparison, I almost always have my DW reading page open and will come back to it whenever I have a spare minute or three. This means that I don't feel any rush to skim through my reading list before I have to close it again, rather than losing my place, whereas I tend to miss a lot on sites with push notifications.

[cesy]

Yes, the script would need to be opt-out.

[azurelunatic]

I hear you on the old computer thing; I have a laptop from '04 as well as my modern desktop.

I think we have different visions of "push notification" as well. I mean merely a pushed notification that there are new things, so one can (if one is so inclined) refresh to view the new things, rather than having the new things foisted upon one will-you-nil-you. Which is something I loathe like screaming burning fire from Facebook.

[archane]

I also meant a notification that there are new posts available. Even that requires a background script running to regularly check for updates and return a number / notification. Sadly, that's enough to slow down my poor little PowerBook.

[azurelunatic]

The lowest-impact on-for-everybody that I can think of would be to do something like check every fifteen minutes (which is a grabbed-out-of-thin-air arbitrary timeframe that seems like it's not too long to wait for notification, but also not so often that it is constantly dragging while you try to work) -- UNTIL it gets word back that there is at least one new entry, and it updates whatever little notification thing there is (title bar and somewhere on the page both, I might think) to say HEY AT LEAST ONE NEW ENTRY. Then, its work is done, because there are new entries, and whenever you refresh, you refresh, so the script turns itself off and no longer makes a bother of itself.

But, if that's also a pain on a slow system, I wouldn't be averse to making it entirely turn-off-able.

[matgb]

This. My netbook started to chug horribly after awhile and I couldn't figure out what it was except I knew it was Firefox related.

Then I did something for awhile without the Twitter homepage open. The slowdown had started after they introduced all their damned scripting.

I now use a different, HTML only web client (dabr.co.uk) and I have no problems at all.

Strangely though, I don't get this problem with Gmail.

Plus, on bandwidth measurements (I have a mobile internet account that allows me 15gb a month, I normally use 0.5, but...) Twitter is a massive hog, whereas Gmail isn't. But I want my Gmail to update, and can easily switch to HTML view to stop it, whereas Twitter is merely extra fun, so I only want to update it when I've time for fun.

So yeah, my 'with changes', make it opt out, make sure it isn't the resource and bandwidth hog that Twitter is, and reduce membory usage to a minimum.

[azurelunatic]

What do you think of my low-impact version outlined above?

[matgb]

Would work for me. TBH, my biggest pet hate with Twitter web interface is the disable pagination, and while I know you can dump it via blocking JS, that's too big a blunt instrument to remove a stupid UI choice.

It needs to be opt out able, and it needs to be low impact, but if it is both these things, it would be good.

[zing_och]

Yes. Exactly that (at least for one of my computers).

+1

[sorchasilver]

I wouldn't use it but I can see that it might be good to have. I would prefer it to be opt-in ( I know that's bad from DW's POV, but from mine it's really valuable).