[coldtea]

That's a valid point for such apps as Slack or Gmail etc.

But then:

a) the majority of the apps asking for notifications are spammy sites (as always the louder offenders).

b) Slack, Gmail etc can have its notifications enable toggle hidden in Settings (and Slack indeed has significant customization options for notifications there).

If we start saying "ok, Slack is useful, so it's OK to allow it to show an unsolicited popup asking to show notifications" then next thing we have half the useless web also doing the same.

It's not a slippery slope either -- it's just how the web and spam works, with spammer sites/ads/etc exploiting any given opportunity to be loud and soliciting to the max...

[Touche]

If you're so easily annoyed you should really be surfing with JavaScript off. The reality is that sites can do any number of things to annoy you because you are giving them permission to execute code on your machine. If you don't trust them with this permission then don't give it to them.

[coldtea]

>If you're so easily annoyed

What's "easy" about it? My annoyance is the age old popup annoyance, something tons of web users have lamented for ages.

Ever heard anyone say they LIKE unsolicited popups? Even if it is to ask permission for something?

>The reality is that sites can do any number of things to annoy you because you are giving them permission to execute code on your machine. If you don't trust them with this permission then don't give it to them.

Sounds like a slippery slope. I don't understand these kind of half-thought arguments.

I never said I want webpages to act as simple text. I like dynamic pages and apps -- I just don't like unsolicited popups and dialogs.

The same holds true for the desktop, and countless people have expressed their frustrations with such popups there too. Starting from Clippy, the most annoying popup of all time, to the backslash against Windows (Vista?) "asking for admin permissions" dialog, which made them tone it down, and all the way to today...

[Touche]

If you don't like dialogs at all I don't know why you are getting so bent out of shape over this feature. Any webpage can do alert("look at me") and you actually HAVE to act on that.

[coldtea]

What I don't get is how expressing my opinion -- necessarily in multiple comments, as people respond to my initial arguments or misinterpret them and I get back into the discussion, not to mention me being naturally chatty --, makes me "bent out of shape", "so easily offended", etc. over the feature.

How about not making personal characterizations?