W3C to develop a new notifications specification

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has formed a new Web Notification Working Group tasked with developing a specification to define ways in which internet users can receive information through notifications displayed outside the confines of the browser window. The working group wants to have a first public draft ready by September and plans to finalise the complete specification, as a recommendation, in early 2012.

A first editor's draft by John Gregg (Google) is already available. The idea is to create notifications similar to those with which users have already become familiar. For example, the Thunderbird email program can be configured to display a notification when a new email has arrived and calendar programs often post reminders of forthcoming events.

Examples of existing notification platforms in the first draft include Growl on Mac OS X, NotifyOSD on Linux and Window's own notification system. The W3C planned specification is to be independent of specific operating systems while being as compatible as possible to these existing notification platforms. Another requirement is that notifications should only be generated after a user has indicated that they are wanted.

(crve)