Beta testers wanted! A new "browser notifications" functionnality is coming!

[Een]

Hello boardgamers!

To improve the BGA experience, we have been working to use a new browser functionality: Web Push Notifications.

The idea is to allow for an alternative way to be notified about the useful website events, even if you are multitasking (browsing in another tab or using another application on your computer) and with your computer sound muted. Also, this will allow for notifications on mobile devices, which is pretty exciting (of course, this functionnality will be opt-in, so that only the players who need it will use it).

Great news: it's ready and working! But this is still experimental, and so we'd like feedback before opening it to everyone.

NB: this functionality has not been implemented by Apple on iPhone/iPads/Safari. So it will not work with Apple devices.

If you'd like to help us beta-test the functionnality:

1. Join the Web notifications testers group (NB: we'll limit the beta to around 50 people, so if you can't join the group it's that we have already enough people for testing)
2. Go into your account preferences, click the "Notifications" tab, then activate notifications and say yes to your browser when it asks for confirmation.
3. Test by clicking on "Send me a test notification" in the list of your browser subscriptions at the bottom of the page. You should get a notification similar to the one in the image below this post.
4. Enjoy and please give feedback in this forum thread! The whole point of a beta testing phase is getting quality feedback: we are counting on you!

You have been notified!

[yoyote]

Wow, thanks !
All the first steps work correctly on my Android smartphone with Chrome.
Let's try some game notifications

Edit : j'ai mis à 'oui' toutes les options.
je viens de recevoir un mail comme quoi c'est à mon tour de jouer une partie en tour par tour, mais je n'ai pas reçu de notif. Par contre, c'est une partie que j'ai débuté avant mon inscription aux notifs.

Edit 2 : cette fois, j'ai bien reçu une notif comme quoi c'est à moi de jouer en tour par tour, (toujours pour la même partie)

[Liallan]

(of course, this functionnality will be opt-in, so that only the players who need it will use it).

Thanks for that, since I'm one of the ones who doesn't need it.

But I will help beta-test it.

The initial test worked. I'll leave it on for at least a few days and see if any problems come up.

[Een]

But I will help beta-test it.

The initial test worked. I'll leave it on for at least a few days and see if any problems come up.

Thanks!

[CB Droege]

I went through the steps but did not get a test notification. I'm on Windows 10 with Chrome version 70.0.3538.110

It does work for me on mobile.

[dudi2]

Before joining beta testers I regognized a regression:

The yellow bar "Your turn-based games: 2 waiting for you / 22 in progress" is not being updated anymore on open tabs.
Have you changed anything on them already?
Browser: Vivaldi 2.2.1373.4 (Offizieller Build) (64-Bit)
Feature worked till about 2 days ago.

Now I will join the beta test and try it out.

[Liallan]

The yellow bar "Your turn-based games: 2 waiting for you / 22 in progress" is not being updated anymore on open tabs.

The notification thing may have messed something up with updating the current player on turn, but it's not related directly to joining the test group.

That bar is not being updated any longer, and the entire page of my current games is not being updated either. That is, once I took some turns, the hourglass symbol did not move to the next player, showing me as still on turn, and I also discovered today that it was not showing me on turn when I was... meaning having to open each table individually to find out. This remained this way even after I went into Play Now to try to refresh it. I'm having to open a new browser tab and come to the site again to refresh it.

Yesterday I came to the forums specifically to see if anyone else had posted about this, which is when I found this thread, but it had already happened before I joined the beta group. So that can't be the cause.

EDIT: Sorry, I misinterpreted what you were saying. I thought you were warning people of this before they join the beta group, and you are meaning you discovered it before joining.

[Liallan]

Note the turn update problem was reported in the bugs, and Sourisdudesert confirmed it and said it would be fixed with the next update.

[bockatore]

On one of the two computers I tested this on, I had website notifications globally blocked. It took a little while to figure out how to unblock them since the symptom was I never got a browser (Firefox) popup asking me if I wanted to allow notifications from this site. On the notifications tab in the preferences page you might want to display how to check for this. In Firefox:

Go to about:preferences#privacy, Permissions->Notifications->Settings->Uncheck "Block new requests asking to allow notifications".

[bockatore]

As others have noted, the "Your turn-based games: 1 waiting for you / 13 in progress" is broken and doesn't appear to automatically refresh. When I refreshed the page, I saw that I had a game to play. However, I never received a pop up web browser notification about it, despite the test message coming through.