HTML5 Desktop Notifications Example

G’day mate. So today I did a quick demo to show you an example of desktop notifications using HTML5 and a little JavaScript.

View Project on GitHub

Background info on HTML5 Desktop Alerts

A notification allows alerting the user outside the context of a web page of an occurrence, such as the delivery of email.

You can display, queue and replace notifications. You can also add an icon to the alert which appears left of the message body. Also also you can use the tag member for multiple instances (The result of this situation is a single notification; the second one replaces the first having the same tag). Read more about the W3C Web Notifications API.

From my testing only 4 alerts show at any one time, they get queued so when you close one the next one will show and so on. Also you cannot put hyperlinks in them (which would be nice to have). This is what the desktop alert looks like.

And like most features like this for security reasons you’re prompted for access.

The Script

The script is pretty simple it just uses the webkitNotifications to generate a desktop alert with a title and message.

/*
   @Copyright: jQuery4u 2012
   @Author: Sam Deering
   @Script: html5desktopalert.js
*/
(function($,W,D,undefined)
{
    W.JQUERY4U = W.JQUERY4U || {};
    W.JQUERY4U.HTML5DESKTOPALERT = {
        name: "jQuery HTML5 DESKTOP ALERT",
        namespace: "W.JQUERY4U.HTML5DESKTOPALERT",
        settings:
        {
           //turn into plugin? ...
        },
        cache:
        {
            //runtime data, dom elements etc...
        },
        init: function(settings)
        {
            this.settings = $.extend({}, this.settings, settings);
            this.cache.notifications = window.webkitNotifications;
            this.testBrowserSupport();
            this.setupEventHandlers();
        },
        setupEventHandlers: function()
        {
           var _this = this;
           $('#alert-me-btn').bind('click', function(e)
           {
               _this.checkPermission("desktopAlert");
           });
        },
        //tests HTML5 browser support and permission request
        testBrowserSupport: function()
        {
            var $browserMsg = $('#browser-support-msg');
            if(this.cache.notifications)
            {
                $browserMsg.html("Yay! Notifications are supported on this browser.").parent().addClass('alert-success');
            }
            else
            {
                $browserMsg.html("Sorry. Notifications aren't supported on this browser.").parent().addClass('alert-error');
            }
        },
        checkPermission: function(callback)
        {
            var _this = this;
            if (this.cache.notifications.checkPermission() == 0)
            {
                _this[callback]();
            }
            else
            {
                this.cache.notifications.requestPermission(function()
                {
                    if (this.cache.notifications.checkPermission() == 0) _this[callback]();
                });
            }
        },
        desktopAlert: function()
        {
            console.log('sending alert...');
            var notification = window.webkitNotifications.createNotification("", $('#da-title').val(), $('#da-message').val());
            notification.show();
        }
    }
    $(D).ready( function()
    {
        //start up the form events
        W.JQUERY4U.HTML5DESKTOPALERT.init();
    });
})(jQuery,window,document);

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about HTML5 Desktop Notifications