Notification

Notifications keep you informed about results, warnings and errors.

Installing the notification package

Install the package together with the ZEIT ONLINE design system, because the notification styles use design-system variables:

npm install @zeitonline/notification @zeitonline/design-system
# or
yarn add @zeitonline/notification @zeitonline/design-system

Recommendation

A practical setup is to copy both CSS files from node_modules into your application styles directory and load them from there.

{
	"scripts": {
		"copy:zds": "mkdir -p ./src/assets/css && cp node_modules/@zeitonline/design-system/design-system.css ./src/assets/css/design-system.css",
		"copy:notification": "mkdir -p ./src/assets/css && cp node_modules/@zeitonline/notification/dist/notification.css ./src/assets/css/notification.css"
	}
}

Then include the styles in this order:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="./src/assets/css/design-system.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="./src/assets/css/notification.css" />

Usage

import notification from '@zeitonline/notification';

notification.show({
	status: 'success',
	message: 'The article was saved.',
	link: {
		text: 'Open reading list',
		href: 'https://example.com/account/reading-list',
	},
});

const trigger = document.querySelector('[data-copy-link]');

trigger?.addEventListener('click', () => {
	notification.showInline({
		element: trigger,
		message: 'Link copied to clipboard.',
	});

	notification.show({
		element: trigger,
		message: 'The article was saved.',
		status: 'success',
	});
});

When element is provided for a toast, the notification is inserted after the trigger and any already-rendered notification siblings, and the stack is reflowed from there. If element is omitted and a direct child element is focused, the notification is inserted after that element instead of being appended to the end of the body.

Screen reader announcements

Notifications are announced through hidden ARIA live regions. Regular notifications use a polite live region, while status: 'error' uses an assertive live region.

Announcements are queued per live-region politeness level. Each message stays in the live region for at least 1.5 seconds and at most 4 seconds, with longer messages receiving proportionally more time. This pacing is intentionally conservative: typical spoken output is often around 150-180 words per minute, while experienced screen-reader users may use 300 words per minute or faster. The queue prevents rapid notification bursts from overwriting earlier announcements before assistive technologies have time to speak them.

If you use the icon option, the notification expects an SVG symbol in the page with the id pattern svg-<name>.

<svg aria-hidden="true" style="display:none">
	<symbol id="svg-bookmark" viewBox="0 0 18 18">
		<path d="..." />
	</symbol>
</svg>

notification.show({
	icon: 'bookmark',
	message: 'The article was removed from your reading list.',
	button: {
		text: 'Undo',
		onClick: () => {
			console.log('Undo');
		},
	},
});

What the package provides

• Notifications with top, top-right and bottom placement.
• Notifications can be anchored next to the triggering element for better reading order.
• Status variants for success, warning, info and error.
• Optional action button or link.
• Inline notifications anchored to the element that triggered them.
• Queued screen-reader announcements with separate polite and assertive live regions.
• Optional group keys to replace earlier notifications within the same position stack.
• Auto-dismiss after the configured duration, with pause and resume on pointer hover, when hasTimer is set to true.
• Notifications emit notification-shown, notification-action and notification-removed custom events on window over their whole lifecycle, so consumers can observe them without touching the call sites. See Lifecycle events.
• Stacking of up to 3 notifications per position at the same time.
• Optional settings.url on timed notifications: when no stored auto-dismiss duration preference exists yet, shows a companion notification with a configurable call-to-action that opens the provided URL in a new tab. Dismissing that hint stores z.notification.hint for two days.

Lifecycle events

Every notification reports its own lifecycle through custom events on window, and show() returns the notification element. This keeps concerns such as analytics out of the call sites: listen once, and every notification in the application is covered, including the auto-dismiss hint the package shows on its own.

window.addEventListener('notification-shown', ({ detail }) => {
	// detail.notification is already in the DOM
});

window.addEventListener('notification-action', ({ detail }) => {
	// the link or the callback button was activated
});

window.addEventListener('notification-removed', ({ detail }) => {
	if (detail.reason === 'close') {
		// the user actively dismissed it, rather than the timer running out
	}
});

All three events share the same detail shape:

Field	Description
notification	The notification element. Still in the DOM in notification-removed.
originator	The element the notification is anchored to.
group	The group the notification was shown with, or null.
status	success, warning, info or error.
hasTimer	Whether an auto-dismiss timer is actually running.
duration	The effective auto-dismiss duration in milliseconds, or undefined when no timer runs.
actionType	link or button, or undefined when the notification has no action.
isCompanion	true for companion notifications such as the auto-dismiss hint.
data	Whatever was passed as the data option, untouched.

notification-removed adds a reason, so consumers can tell a deliberate dismissal from the timer running out:

Reason	Meaning
close	The user clicked the close button.
timeout	The auto-dismiss timer expired.
action	The action button ran its callback.
replaced	A newer notification of the same group took its place.
evicted	The position stack was full.
cascade	The parent notification was removed.
programmatic	Removed through the API without a more specific reason.

Passing your own data through

show() accepts an opaque data object. The package never reads it; it is stored on the notification element and echoed back in every event detail, so consumers can carry their own context without the package knowing what it means.

notification.show({
	group: 'bookmark',
	message: 'The article was saved.',
	data: { myOwnContext: 'whatever the consumer needs' },
});

Stable DOM hooks

The notification's parts carry data-notification-part attributes (icon, message, action, close), which are a safer selector target than the styling class names.

Updates

Take a look at the CHANGELOG.md to see what changed in the latest releases.

Contact

If you want to give feedback about the package, write to zon-frontend@zeit.de.