Intent to implement: Notification inline reply

[Nicolas Satragno]

Contact emails

nsat...@chromium.org, pe...@chromium.org

Spec

I'm working on an early design doc [1], and filed a bug in the spec [2].

Summary

Start tinkering with supporting inline replies on web notifications.

Motivation

Right now if a user wants to write a short text reply to an event such as an instant message, they have to activate a notification which launches a new browser tab and do it there. Supporting inline replies would allow users to quickly reply without having to open a browser tab.

This is especially good for resource constrained devices. In Android, for example, opening a new tab in a low memory device may kill the current user activity.

Interoperability and Compatibility Risk

It's a new optional feature, so there's a low compatibility risk. Chrome would be the first browser supporting the feature.

Ongoing technical constraints

As we move to native notification centres on each platform, we are subject to API availability to support the feature. To put it short, in Mac the notification centre only allows one inflexible "Reply" button, and it would require major work on Android versions < N. Please see the design draft [1] for more details.

Will this feature be supported on all six Blink platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome OS, Android, and Android WebView)?

In an ideal world, all except WebView. I would love to experiment on Android N first. Once the API is more mature, it would be implemented for the rest of the platforms.

OWP launch tracking bug

I haven't filed one yet as this is a very early experimentation stage.

Link to entry on the feature dashboard

https://www.chromestatus.com/features/5743740178137088

Requesting approval to ship?

No.

[1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lN_2cmD1yZg80vGMs4K5JwrlfeALdR-4doODAKV16Hc/edit#heading=h.tav5v5bzofgf

[2] https://github.com/whatwg/notifications/issues/68

[omr...@google.com]

Hi there! Wondering if this was ever implemented.

We are thinking of doing something similar for a project to sync SMS messages into ChromeOS devices and will rely in having inline replies.

[Peter Beverloo]

Hi Omri,

Support for the inline replies proposal has been implemented in Chrome behind the "Experimental Web Platform Features" flag you can find on chrome://flags. It's supported on Android N+, and it being implemented as part of our native Windows notifications work, but not on any of the other platforms. (Including the message center used by, among others, Chrome OS.)

We haven't pursued shipping the feature yet as the reach wasn't yet satisfactory, and there are open questions around its behaviour on certain platforms. It's definitely still on the list, though, and we'll likely pick it up next year :).

Thanks,

Peter