Tuesday, February 16, 2021

MICROSOFT Introduces “ADAPTIVE” NOTIFICATION REQUESTS Update for the EDGE Browser

 


Regular net surfers probably encounter this annoyance a whole lot: they are online checking out sites on a web browser, and when they arrive at some site or other, while the front page is loading a popup prompt shows up, probably in an upper corner, asking if the user would like the site to send them notifications. While they may initially a well-meaning offer of convenience, the prospect of such notifications intruding on your later net-surfs can be aggravating, not to mention potentially unsafe. If only these notification-giving websites can remember that you said no. As it turns out, Microsoft is trying something for that.

As The Verge would have it, Microsoft has been studying a method to cut down on those website notification requests that just interrupt net surfers out of nowhere, and will be including such a feature on their current web browser. The idea the computing giant is testing is “adaptive notification requests,” which is accomplished by having their Edge browser crowd-source data from its many users, taking note of which website notifications they allow, and which ones they block. So far the new notification method has met positive results in testing.

The way it works is that Edge will track how users respond to website notification requests. Usually the options to such a notification are “Allow” and “Block.” If a user chooses block or even just pays no attention to the notification, Edge would remember that action. Thus if another user visits that website on his own Edge browser, it will act on the crowd-sourced data and kill the request popup before it appears. This appears to be the logical continuation of an Edge update from July last year, with a one-click button to quiet notification requests by default. The problem, Microsoft noticed, is that it gave users no option to allow notifications they do like.

Microsoft would have this adaptive notification feature included in the version 88.x build of their Edge browser. It is a reasonable middle ground for net surfers who want only select website notifications, and those who would rather not have the requests bothering them. Now the question is if other browsers would follow Microsoft’s lead for this.

Image courtesy of SlashGear

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