Push Notification Problem

[Trusteft]

For a couple of days (or from yesterday, my memory is a bit iffy) I get this annoying AF pop up at the top of the screen from this site. I get it from a couple of other random sites, but I don't visit them often enough to care.
I keep clicking on No Thanks but it seems it doesn't make any difference.
If it is on your side, please fix it.

Using the latest Opera, Windows 8.1

 

[KALLT]

I have the same problem. It occurs frequently enough, maybe due to my Safari 13 cross-site tracking settings.

 

[S.B.G]

When you click 'no thanks' do you get a secondary message confirming that choice and giving you the option to 'never ask again?'

 

[benz240]

Yeah this is annoying and honestly is a trashy look for this website. Especially since they seem to be subverting the ability of Safari to block notifications from websites - in settings I already have "Deny" set for Macrumors under Notifications, and even unchecked the main box to disallow websites from even asking in the first place. So MR have recently figured out some hack to circumvent this. Again, I thought MR was better than that.

 

[arn]

it's not supposed to re-ask on every page load. Guessing it is because of some cookie blocking? I'll take a closer look.

arn

 

[chabig]

Safari Preferences > Websites > Notifications > uncheck "Allow websites to ask for permission to send notifications".

 

[gimbal]

I have the same issue... even though I have unchecked "Allow websites to ask for permission to send notifications"... basically, the macrumors.com website uses "onesignal" code that (intentionally) sneaks around the user preference. Very hostile towards users, Macrumors.com code should be more respectful of "Mac user's" explicit preferences... grrr

 

[gimbal]

it's not supposed to re-ask on every page load. Guessing it is because of some cookie blocking? I'll take a closer look.

arn

Arn, the current behaviour is way too aggressive, litterally "in-your-face", and annoying. Instead of constantly having to opt-OUT, make it passive, with a button the page for anyone who wants to opt-IN. What is more important to you - the "notification" subscriber count, or, the user experience? Thanks.

 

[benz240]

Arn, the current behaviour is way too aggressive, litterally "in-your-face", and annoying. Instead of constantly having to opt-OUT, make it passive, with a button the page for anyone who wants to opt-IN. What is more important to you - the "notification" subscriber count, or, the user experience? Thanks.

It's sad but I am betting they are prioritizing ad revenue over experience for their users. Advertisers pay more for higher notification sub counts because they know more eyes will likely see their ad. MR readers are usually savvy enough to do what you mentioned and disable the request, so they had to figure out a way around it...and here we are today. "cookie blocking"...haha please stop, it's too much

 

[C DM]

Arn, the current behaviour is way too aggressive, litterally "in-your-face", and annoying. Instead of constantly having to opt-OUT, make it passive, with a button the page for anyone who wants to opt-IN. What is more important to you - the "notification" subscriber count, or, the user experience? Thanks.

It's sad but I am betting they are prioritizing ad revenue over experience for their users. Advertisers pay more for higher notification sub counts because they know more eyes will likely see their ad. MR readers are usually savvy enough to do what you mentioned and disable the request, so they had to figure out a way around it...and here we are today. "cookie blocking"...haha please stop, it's too much

Seems like between https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/push-notifications-not-working.2168528/post-27995875 and https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/the-fix.2213222/post-28016791 a new system was put into place recently. Wouldn't exactly be all that hard to imagine that there might be some kinks to work out.

 

[maverick28]

A funny thing is I'm having the reverse problem. In Safari on Mavericks I can't get MacRumours to raise the prompt asking for my acceptance to receive push notifications. When visiting the page I see this.

Needless to say, I tested with Ad-Blocker and extensions off – to no avail.

 

[arn]

Arn, the current behaviour is way too aggressive, litterally "in-your-face", and annoying. Instead of constantly having to opt-OUT, make it passive, with a button the page for anyone who wants to opt-IN. What is more important to you - the "notification" subscriber count, or, the user experience? Thanks.

it’s not how it’s intended to work. If you have a stock browser, it doesn’t re-ask so aggressively. I’ll see about setting a MacRumors cookie so it only asks once

It's sad but I am betting they are prioritizing ad revenue over experience for their users. Advertisers pay more for higher notification sub counts because they know more eyes will likely see their ad. MR readers are usually savvy enough to do what you mentioned and disable the request, so they had to figure out a way around it...and here we are today. "cookie blocking"...haha please stop, it's too much

Advertisers don’t care or know about notification sub counts. i like how people always try to trigger some conspiracy theory. Obviously you, benz240,must work for a competing website and are trying to discredit this website. (See how ridiculous it sounds?)

 

[Trusteft]

When you click 'no thanks' do you get a secondary message confirming that choice and giving you the option to 'never ask again?'

No. I click on no thanks, it goes away, but sooner or later when I revisit it appears again, asking me, no, mocking me.

 

[gimbal]

it’s not how it’s intended to work. If you have a stock browser, it doesn’t re-ask so aggressively. I’ll see about setting a MacRumors cookie so it only asks once

I have a stock system (Mojave) and stock browser (Safari) but I do clear Safari's history and cache regularly. Yours, and possibly 1 other news site, are the only 2 websites that ignore the User-defined preference to not allow asking for permission. Whatever the "onesignal" code is doing, it's not welcome (by me, at least), because it explicitly ignores my preference to not be bothered.

 

[maverick28]

And to add, I don't know what benefits has the new push system over the old one but I stopped receiving them after the switch, although they state that Mavericks is supported. Apparently not, because in High Sierra the MR push works. My reports remain unnoticed despite the fact that I mailed to their support over broken compatibility.
In my case clearing cache and cookies didn't help.

 

[arn]

I've made a change where the pop-up should only appear once for a given browser. It sets a cookie from www.macrumors.com so it shouldn't be blocked by any cross domain issues.

Let me know how it goes.

And to add, I don't know what benefits has the new push system over the old one but I stopped receiving them after the switch, although they state that Mavericks is supported. Apparently not, because in High Sierra the MR push works. My reports remain unnoticed despite the fact that I mailed to their support over broken compatibility.
In my case clearing cache and cookies didn't help.

I don't see how pushes were working for you before the switchover. Our certificate expired with Apple and we couldn't get a new one set up easily, which is why we switched over to a new service. Pretty sure pushes were 100% broken for at least a month or so.

I can ask the service, it doesn't seem like they list specific versions of macOS it supports, though it should be from Mavericks onward.

 

[jasnw]

it’s not how it’s intended to work. If you have a stock browser, it doesn’t re-ask so aggressively. I’ll see about setting a MacRumors cookie so it only asks once

That's not going to help those of us who regularly toss our cookies (so to speak). Please don't use cookies to control this sort of activity. Just let people know these push notifications are available and let them sign up for them somewhere in their user settings.

 

[arn]

That's not going to help those of us who regularly toss our cookies (so to speak). Please don't use cookies to control this sort of activity. Just let people know these push notifications are available and let them sign up for them somewhere in their user settings.

How do you stay logged into the site without cookies?
[automerge]1575139851[/automerge]
Sorry for those who are more aggressive about blocking cookies, etc. There is this solution, which I admit is a bit aggressive, but will solve the issue once and for all (for not just our site, but all sites that run onesignal push notifications):

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/the-fix.2213222/

arn

 

[jasnw]

How do you stay logged into the site without cookies?

I stay logged in until I close my browser which flushes all history/cookies, and log back in when I revisit the site. I close the browser fairly often, and since MR is mostly covering content and mobile systems I'm not spending much time on MR these days.

 

[maverick28]

I've made a change where the pop-up should only appear once for a given browser. It sets a cookie from www.macrumors.com so it shouldn't be blocked by any cross domain issues.

Let me know how it goes.



I don't see how pushes were working for you before the switchover. Our certificate expired with Apple and we couldn't get a new one set up easily, which is why we switched over to a new service. Pretty sure pushes were 100% broken for at least a month or so.

I can ask the service, it doesn't seem like they list specific versions of macOS it supports, though it should be from Mavericks onward.

Because I clearly remember getting MR pushes this year, several months ago, this fall and summer. That's for sure.

 

[arn]

Because I clearly remember getting MR pushes this year, several months ago, this fall and summer. That's for sure.

Yeah it was working back then but it stopped working recently.

 

[maverick28]

Yeah it was working back then but it stopped working recently.

It would be great if you fixed this for all macOSes that support push notifications.

 

[gimbal]

I've made a change where the pop-up should only appear once for a given browser. It sets a cookie from www.macrumors.com so it shouldn't be blocked by any cross domain issues.

No, No, No!

The website should NOT ASK if the user explicity UN-checks "Allow websites to ask..."

That's the point. I regularly clear Safari History, which clears the cookies. So using a cookie to store the user preference is not a solution. RESPECTING the Safari setting to not ask, is the solution. I think I'm done with using Macrumors, since you don't respect Mac user's explicit preference settings.

 

[Trusteft]

I've made a change where the pop-up should only appear once for a given browser. It sets a cookie from www.macrumors.com so it shouldn't be blocked by any cross domain issues.

Let me know how it goes.



I don't see how pushes were working for you before the switchover. Our certificate expired with Apple and we couldn't get a new one set up easily, which is why we switched over to a new service. Pretty sure pushes were 100% broken for at least a month or so.

I can ask the service, it doesn't seem like they list specific versions of macOS it supports, though it should be from Mavericks onward.

I haven't had the issue today, so if it is because of what you did, thank you.

 

[arn]

No, No, No!

The website should NOT ASK if the user explicity UN-checks "Allow websites to ask..."

That's the point. I regularly clear Safari History, which clears the cookies. So using a cookie to store the user preference is not a solution. RESPECTING the Safari setting to not ask, is the solution. I think I'm done with using Macrumors, since you don't respect Mac user's explicit preference settings.

View attachment 880136

That setting doesn’t mean exactly what you think it means.

Websites can’t detect that setting. It’s to prevent Safari from ever triggering the native permission dialog. We can’t detect it.

The dialog we show is a javascript dialog that isn’t the actual push permission dialog. It’s intended to be a one time dialog, which I understand might bother you. If you don’t want to see it ever again on any site, I linked instructions how to block it at a network level.

arn