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Icons are no longer imported and resized

  • # api

On 28 September 2016 we have changed how the icon_url of the Pushpad API works.

Old behavior

The notification icon used to be downloaded from your website and distributed with our CDN.  This was the initial choice since it works very well for blogs that broadcast the same notification to thousands of subscribers. However if you have a web app that sends transactional notifications only to a few people, then this could be quite expensive for Pushpad and have some drawbacks for the app.

For this reason we've just rolled out an update.

New behavior

When you pass an icon_url to the API, Pushpad no longer imports the icon. Instead, the image url is passed directly to the browser that displays the notification.

Benefits for the app:

  • lower latency when you send a notification with the API
  • avoid some errors caused by connection timeouts during the download of the icon

What you should do

Nothing.

However, if you want to improve the download time of the icon and make sure it looks great, we have some suggestions:

  • the suggested notification icon size is 192x192px (previously icons were resized by Pushpad)
  • do not use large or heavy images that consume a lot of bandwidth when are downloaded by the browser
  • use a CDN for the images