Chrome 42 beta brings push notifications, app install banners and more for developers
Chrome 42 beta brings push notifications, app install banners and more for developers
The web is quickly becoming as powerful as native apps and Chrome 42 beta brings a number of huge features for developers to Android devices.
First, it brings a new “App Install Banner” that allows websites to show a prompt to users that asks if they want to add your site to their home screen.
The idea is that Google wants to encourage users to start pinning the sites they frequent to their home screen, just like apps.
App Install Banners are fairly straightforward to implement for developers. Sites wanting to use the feature must meet eligibility criteria, however, so that users get an acceptable experience when using the new feature.
Chrome 42 also brings push notifications to the web, thanks to a new Push API that allows them to send a system notification. Your website can now send a full notification, even if Chrome isn’t open.
Developers will need to use a service worker alongside the Push API to implement push notifications and users can disable them via a new button that appears on the notification called “site settings.”
Safari on OS X can send push notifications for websites, but not for iOS users yet. Google’s really pushing to show that notifications work cross-platform almost everywhere now.
There are also updates to JavaScript, now offering ES6 classes for code written using strict mode. A number of smaller changes are also detailed in Google’s announcement post.
These new features are big news for the web, which is increasingly becoming on-par with native apps. The changes allow websites to almost imitate a native app, so expect to see these features adopted fairly quickly around the web.
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