1240705 - Show rationale for requesting a permission if needed

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Sebastian Kaspari (:sebastian; :pocmo)]

The patches for runtime permissions (bug 1212830) didn't add any additional UI. Android has an API call to check whether the app should show UI with rationale for requesting a permission:

> ActivityCompat.shouldShowRequestPermissionRationale
> 
> Gets whether you should show UI with rationale for requesting a permission. You 
> should do this only if you do not have the permission and the context in which 
> the permission is requested does not clearly communicate to the user what would 
> be the benefit from granting this permission.
> 
> For example, if you write a camera app, requesting the camera permission would 
> be expected by the user and no rationale for why it is requested is needed. If 
> however, the app needs location for tagging photos then a non-tech savvy user 
> may wonder how location is related to taking photos. In this case you may 
> choose to show UI with rationale of requesting this permission.

Comment 1

[Sebastian Kaspari (:sebastian; :pocmo)]

There are three states that we can catch with shouldShowRequestPermissionRationale(). Let's add them to the Permissions class (as needed):

* Before requesting a permission: If the context does not clearly communicate why the permission is needed: "We need this for X. Okay?" -> Prompt user 
* After rejecting a permission: If the permission has been denied: "We really need this. Do you want to accept now?" -> Prompt again
* After permanently rejecting a permission: "Oooooh. Really?" -> Link to App permission settings (Can't prompt again)

Not all of those are always needed; This heavily depends on the situation and permission.

Comment 2

[BMO Automation]

We have completed our launch of our new Firefox on Android. The development of the new versions use GitHub for issue tracking. If the bug report still reproduces in a current version of [Firefox on Android nightly](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fenix) an issue can be reported at the [Fenix GitHub project](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/). If you want to discuss your report please use [Mozilla's chat](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Matrix#Connect_to_Matrix) server https://chat.mozilla.org and join the [#fenix](https://chat.mozilla.org/#/room/#fenix:mozilla.org) channel.