Levels of Importance or Priority

As of right now in the Web Notifications API, there is no way to set the
importance of a notification.  I think this is a very important feature and
should be considered for adoption.

I have noticed that in a few other threads, the concept of levels of
importance or priority (I will refer to it as priority from here on out)
have been brought up.  However, the concept has received a lot of
resistance.  I want to argue for the adoption of it in the Web
Notifications API.

I am currently working on a Visitor Chat system, in which a visitor can go
to a web site and start a chat with an operator.  I have implemented
Desktop Notifications in Google chrome to help notify operators of new chat
assignments.  I have also implemented other notification features such as
sounds.  The issue that I am having is that some of the operators that are
assigned to the system are also assigned to answer calls and emails.
Company Policy and their current system configuration does not allow for
sound to be enabled, thus they have to rely on seeing desktop notifications
when a new assignment comes in.  Unfortunately, the the Desktop
Notifications are too small and often go unnoticed, thus resulting in a
loss of customers.

While a solution to this problem could be to create a custom notification
application, I believe that a better course of action would be to use a
specification such as Web Notifications.

My instance is also not a lone instance where a higher priority
notification would be useful.  Some other examples would be weather
application that notifies you when there is a tornado warning in your
current location.  Or an alert application for a university that displays a
notification when there is a shooter on the camps.

While I don't care how the UA handles the higher priority notifications, I
think the priority should be defined in the API.  Some browsers might
choose to center them on the screen, others might make them bigger, others
might make them flash.  How it happens, is not important.  There are also
several ways that non visual UAs might handle higher priority notifications.

I know the issue of who should assign the priority (API or end user) was
mentioned before.  While I see the concern, the notification priority
should be defined in the API and up to the programmer.  If the user does
not like it, they can turn off the notifications.  Or the programmer could
implement a feature to let the user select the priority of notifications
for the site.

-- 
*Regards,*
*Michael Fairchild*