Michal Ždanský Notifications are an integral part of modern smartphones, and even the first version of iOS, then iPhone OS, had a way to display certain events. From today's perspective, the implementation back then seems primitive. Until iOS 3.0, there was no support for third-party notifications, and until the introduction of Notification Center in iOS 5, notifications were often permanently lost after unlocking the screen. In iOS 8, after these two milestones comes another important milestone in notifications – notifications become interactive.
So far, they have only served for informational purposes. In addition to deleting them, users were only allowed to open the corresponding app on the spot that was related to the notification, for example a text message opened a specific conversation. But that was the end of all interaction. The real pioneer of interactive notifications was Palm, which introduced them with WebOS back in 2009, two years after the release of the iPhone. Interactive notifications made it possible, for example, to work with invitations in the calendar while the application was open, while another notification controlled music playback. Later, interactive notifications were adapted by Android, in 2011 in version 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, version 4.3 Jelly Bean then further expanded their possibilities.
Compared to the competition, Apple has been very slow, on the other hand, its final solution to the issue of notifications is easy to grasp, consistent and safe at the same time. While Android can turn notifications into handy little apps, widgets, if you will, notifications in iOS are significantly more purposeful. For greater interaction at the widget level, Apple leaves developers with a separate tab in the Notification Center, while notifications are more or less for one-time actions.
Interaction can take place in all places where you encounter notifications - in the Notification Center, with banners or modal notifications, but also on the locked screen. Each notification can allow up to two actions, with the exception of the modal notification, where four actions can be placed. In the Notification Center and on the lock screen, just swipe left to reveal the notification options, and the banner needs to be pulled down. Modal notifications are an exception here, the user is offered the "Options" and "Cancel" buttons. After tapping "Options" the notification expands to offer five buttons below (four actions and Cancel)
Actions are divided into their categories – destructive and non-destructive. All actions from accepting an invitation to liking to marking a reply to a message can be non-destructive. Destructive actions are usually related to deletion, blocking, etc., and have a red button in the menu, while the buttons for non-destructive actions are gray or blue. The action category is decided by the developer. Regarding the lock screen, the developer also determines what types of actions will require a security code to be entered when it is active. This prevents anyone from replying to your messages or deleting emails from the lock screen. Common practice will probably be to allow neutral actions, all others like posting replies or deleting will then require a code.
One application can use several categories of notifications, according to which the available actions will unfold. For example, the calendar can offer other interactive buttons for meeting invitations and reminders. Likewise, Facebook, for example, will offer options to "Like" and "Share" for posts, and "Reply" and "View" for a message from a friend.
Interactive notification in practice
In its current form, iOS 8 does not support interactive notifications for many applications. Undoubtedly the most important is the ability to reply to iMessages and SMS directly from the notification. After all, this option was a frequent reason for jailbreaking, where it was thanks to a handy utility BiteSMS able to reply to messages from anywhere without having to launch the application. If you choose a modal notification type for messages, the quick reply interface will be very similar to BiteSMS. If you reply from a banner or notification center, the text field will appear at the top of the screen instead of in the middle of the screen. Of course, this function will also be available to third-party applications, quick replies to messages from Facebook or Skype, or to @mentions on Twitter.
The mentioned calendar, in turn, can work with invitations in the manner described above, and e-mails can be marked or deleted directly. However, the most interesting thing will be to see how the developers deal with interactive notifications. For example, taskmasters can snooze task notifications, mark a task as completed, and perhaps even use text input to enter new tasks into the Inbox. Social and building games can also take on a whole new dimension, where we can use actions to decide how to deal with an event that occurred while we didn't have the game on.
Together with extensions and Document Picker, interactive notifications are a step in the right direction towards the future of operating systems. They do not offer as much freedom as Android in some respects, they have their limits, not only for reasons of uniformity, but also for security. For many applications, they will not be as important as, for example, for IM clients, but it will be up to the developers how skillfully they can use the notifications. Because these news in iOS 8 are intended for them. We definitely have a lot to look forward to in the fall.
For developers, I would just like to add that with the arrival of iOS 8 and new notifications, the way they register has also changed so that they can properly respond to these news. It is well described, for example, here: http://www.appentwicklung.at/2014/08/changes-ios-8-push-notifications-apns/
I believe this will make it easier for a lot of developers to find out why something is not working.