[Touche]

I don't understand what you want.

You say you don't like distractions but there are dozens of ways a webpage can distract you. They can throw an alert() at you and you are forced to deal with it. This is much worse than an ignorable permission prompt.

If browsers were to remove alerts, remove all types of features that need notification dialogs, web pages could still throw a modal dialog over its content.

What you are asking for: a web with JavaScript but somehow with "distractions" prevented, is impossible. The second you allow someone to execute code on your computer, you are allowing them to do things that you might dislike.

[tdicola]

I'm not asking that notifications be completely removed from the spec. I'm pointing out that popping a distracting dialog when you visit the root of a domain is a poor design decision that should be re-evaluated. We don't do it for SSL, RSS, favorites, and plenty of other information about a site. I don't see why web notifications are so important they need to distract people immediately upon visiting the site.

[coldtea]

>I don't understand what you want. You say you don't like distractions but there are dozens of ways a webpage can distract you. They can throw an alert() at you and you are forced to deal with it. This is much worse than an ignorable permission prompt.

Did you see us anywhere else rooting in favor of alert() windows?

If not, how are we contradictory, or how is that they are ALSO annoying relevant? We are both against those AND against notifications. How's that hard to understand?

Yes, there are lots of ways a browser can distract us. That's why want to remove some of them. A few, like the option of a modal window, we consider necessary evil -- but still, we'd advise against developers overusing it.

That doesn't mean we can't complaint about other distractions. Like autoplay on videos and music, bad contrast, intrusive apps, etc.

Also, taking something out or making something slightly more difficult to achieve still has merit for eliminating it, even if there are workarounds. It's not "all or nothing".

The "blink" tag got killed too (FF killed it first back in the day IIRC), despite the fact that it was part of the web standard or that it could be replicated easily with JS and CSS. And guess what? We don't see the same effect as much now -- even though it's 100% possible, and takes 1 line of CSS animations to achieve.

>What you are asking for: a web with JavaScript but somehow with "distractions" prevented, is impossible. The second you allow someone to execute code on your computer, you are allowing them to do things that you might dislike.

And a world without bullying is also impossible. As long as people are people, some are stronger etc. This doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't fight against it.

The world is not "all or nothing", either no distractions at all for some Gopher-era experience, or full blown access to all kinds of bells and whistles for distraction...

[gutnor]

That's actually the use case for Safari Read mode, right ? Just the article to read, not "next page", ads, popup or anything.