Hi everyone, I have a question on how to use javascript to alert / notify a user to a call to action from a page that is not running in a focused forground.

Here is what I'm trying to build. I am creating a live help notification for our call center sales people to know when a customer is wanting to connect with a live chat. My plan is to have our people keep open an active web page during the day, and through the magic of AJAX, allow an audio file to play an alert sound when a new request comes through.

My question is how can I provide a visual alert on the screen too? Can javascript be used to flash the IE application tab in the task bar of Windows? Similiar to other applications when they flash when attention is needed.

Any help and/or suggestions is appreciated!

Not sure if you can do that from JS. What happens when you just do window.focus()? I think if the window is minimized, then it just flashes.

What I think might be more useful, and give you more power, is to just create a small Adobe AIR app that does the notifications. You get a better sound API, and you could actually create a notification popup like you'd see with MSN or AIM. There is also Bubbles which may be a bit simpler to set up than AIR.

Originally Posted by Christopher

What I think might be more useful, and give you more power, is to just create a small Adobe AIR app that does the notifications. You get a better sound API, and you could actually create a notification popup like you'd see with MSN or AIM. There is also Bubbles which may be a bit simpler to set up than AIR.

Very interesting! I have never heard of any of these two before. The Adobe AIR looks really cool, and it appears to be a free tool with SDK tools. I gotta check into this some more. Thanks!

Yeah, AIR is great

You might find this free PDF useful: http://onair.adobe.com/files/AIRforJSDevPocketGuide.pdf

Thank you again, great learning resource. It might take me a little time to get familiar with AIR, so I think I'm going to go ahead with the JS method for now until I can get a chance to teach myself to redo it in AIR.

The window.focus() method does seem to work, but it also does what is expected and steals the attention unless you are working from another app elsewhere.