Closed Bug 1327391 Opened 8 years ago Closed 8 years ago

Web pages using Flash plugin are able to track sound indicator state

Categories

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect)

defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: arni2033, Unassigned)

References

Details

(Whiteboard: [parity-Chrome])

>>> My Info: Win7_64, Nightly 49, 32bit, ID 20160526082509 STR_1: 1. Open http://www.flabell.com/flash/Simple-Flash-Mp3-Player-37 or http://www.epplayer.com/ 2. Click play button in Flash player 3. Click sound indicator in tab to disable sound in tab AR: Flash interface changes, so it's able to track sound indicator state and report it to web page. ER: Flash shouldn't be able to track the state of sound indicator (otherwise it can show more ads)
Component: Untriaged → Plug-ins
Product: Firefox → Core
No longer blocks: 1277113
Ehsan, is it the desired state that a page should not know whether the user has muted it? If so, do you know how/why Flash has exposed that information, and whether we could get them to stop?
Flags: needinfo?(ehsan)
(In reply to Benjamin Smedberg [:bsmedberg] from comment #1) > Ehsan, is it the desired state that a page should not know whether the user > has muted it? No. > If so, do you know how/why Flash has exposed that information, > and whether we could get them to stop? I'm not sure why we would want to do that. The way that we interface with the plugin is we call an API to tell Flash whether the volume has changed, and we can't control how Flash exposes this information to the Flash script.
Flags: needinfo?(ehsan)
We can't, but Adobe can. I don't know how this is exposed to actionscript currently, but I'm wondering if it was an accident and not on purpose.
Whiteboard: [parity-Chrome]
(In reply to Benjamin Smedberg [:bsmedberg] from comment #3) > We can't, but Adobe can. I don't know how this is exposed to actionscript > currently, but I'm wondering if it was an accident and not on purpose. FWIW, until we changed things to keep the icon visible shortly after the playback was stopped (can't find the bug# right now unfortunately) we would make normal media elements on a page muted also when you clicked on the sound indicator to mute the page, so there's some precedence in exposing this to normal web pages. What's the reason for not exposing this to the page?
It seems to be the assertion of this bug that web pages shouldn't be able to know if they are muted (and change their layout). I personally see some value in that description of the feature, but I'm not the feature owner. If the current behavior is desired, please resolve WONTFIX.
(In reply to :Ehsan Akhgari from comment #4) > FWIW, until we changed things to keep the icon visible shortly after the playback was stopped > (can't find the bug# right now unfortunately) we would make normal media elements on a page muted > also when you clicked on the sound indicator to mute the page, so there's some precedence in > exposing this to normal web pages. Could you be more specific? All data this simple should be available for checking by others. I use Nightly 2016-05-26, i.e. before the feature you mentioned was implemented. When I mute tab, media elements report volume == 1, i.e. not muted. You obviously think that it's important enough, otherwise you wouldn't mention it. What exactly did you mean in your comment, and how sure you are: - If you're not sure at all, then delete your invalid comment and don't use it as a reason to make a decision to worsen UX in this bug. - If you're pretty sure, then value of proving you wrong is quite high. Please provide an exact version and a way for media element on the page to know if sound in tab was disabled. I'll agree or make a testcase proving you wrong. Because what you're trying to do is to lie to worsen UX. - If you're not sure at all, I won't even bother investigating and will hide your comment instead.
Flags: needinfo?(ehsan)
I tested a Nightly from 2015-08-01 (right after this feature was implemented) and I was wrong, HTML media wasn't getting the muted state before. Sorry about that. I still don't understand why we should hide this information from the Flash movie. I can't really ask Adobe to change anything without having a good reason. Also, I tested the websites in comment 0 in Safari to see if it suffers from the same issue (since it uses the same API as we use) and I couldn't get the Flash on flabell.com to load, and the Flash movie on eppplayer.com doesn't change in any way in neither Safari or Firefox when the tab is muted (the flabell.com Flash does change in Firefox). So at this point I have nothing to move forward with here.
Flags: needinfo?(ehsan)
It sounds like the current behavior is considered acceptable, so I'm going to WONTFIX this.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 8 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
Product: Core → Core Graveyard
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