Mozilla seems to be really concerned about Firefox users as it is continuously taking steps to provide a better experience. With the upcoming Firefox 72 that will start rolling out to users in January 2020, Firefox will reportedly hide popup notifications by default.
The report comes from ZDNet according to a statement from a Mozilla engineer. Notably, Mozilla conducted an experiment on Firefox Nightly and Beta to understand user interactions with notifications from which they got to know that 97% of Firefox users dismiss notifications.
With this change, when a website triggers a popup, it will be hidden by default and an animated icon will appear on the address bar to let the user know that a popup notification has shown up.
I tested out the feature in Firefox Nightly 72 build running on my laptop and found the claims to be true. Take a look at the below video to see the new icon that animates whenever you get a new notification popup.
As you can see, the new implementation had a very minimal intrusion on the workflow since the only way I will get to know that a website is trying to show me notification is by that wiggly animated icon, which is far better than straight-up shouting at the user for permissions in my opinion.
Mozilla’s decision to hide the notification pop-up by default is indeed great for users. I personally disable notifications in browsers to avoid getting distracted when I’m looking for something. With this feature, I might actually consider keeping the notification popup feature turned on whenever I use Firefox as there is comparatively less intrusion.
So, what are your thoughts on this new pop-up implementation of Firefox? Tell us in the comments.
