1478277 - Add the API allowing to add permissions into SitePermissions.jsm and WebExtensions

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(WebExtensions :: Untriaged, enhancement)

Description

[KOLANICH]

I wanna expose some API to webpages, but I consider it a privacy threat since different versions of browser may parse the same source a bit differently. So I wanna put it under a permission.

So I tried to tinker a WebExtension experiment allowing webextensions to define an own permission, but found that gPermissionObject is not exposed. Also I found no docs on adding a permission.

So I propose to add some API into SitePermissions allowing to define and undefine a new permission and its notification strings and logos in runtime.

Comment 1

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm not sure this is a good idea. The extension would have to integrate its permission into all our permission/security UI (the permission prompts, control center, page info, etc.). I'm really not a big fan of exposing this sort of privileged UI to extensions and I also don't think we should open up the permission manager to extension entries (there were all sorts of maintenance nightmares when add-ons could still manipulate the permissions db).

This seems like a lot of maintenance overhead for something that you can quite easily implement yourself by asking the user in some custom UI and just storing their consent in your own storage.

So my vote as one of the folks maintaining permissions on browser side is WONTFIX. Leaving this to the WebExtension team to confirm.

Comment 2

[Mike Conca [:mconca]]

Everything :johannh says in comment 1 is correct. The WebExtensions team has no desire to expose this functionality.