Pop Up - is it possible

AHarvey · 16 Nov 2011 at 23:50

Hi all,

I was just wondering if this was possible:

Say you have a browser tab open, it's showing work related information streaming live from a website.

You navigate away from the screen and something happens that needs your immediate attention and not having speakers an audible alarm is no use. So, could you have a pop up window appear on the screen to get your attention? Always on top so it can't get missed?

If it is possible, what if the browser was minimised and you had other software open?

How would you go about this?

Phunky · 17 Nov 2011 at 10:03

Its possible but most browsers these days will block popup windows that are opened without user interaction. A simple alternative could be to use a JS alert but that wouldn't be any good if you was in another application.

If you really need to be alerted you could abuse something like Twitter and have it send you a tweet and then depending on your phone/twitter client you will get a visual and audio alert when a new tweet comes in.

visibleman · 17 Nov 2011 at 15:09

Either as Phunky said or you could possibly use HTML5 notifications (have a look HERE) API but browser support is limited to Chrome (there is a plugin for FF I believe).

lookitsjonno · 17 Nov 2011 at 17:19

change the window title to "New Message" and maybe animate it so it's eyecatching.

New Message.
New Message..
New Message...

8t10 · 17 Nov 2011 at 19:55

Javascript alert box will, for the most part, make the tab it is triggered on the active tab. Different browsers do different things anyway though so it's not really ideal.