1508961 - Show a notification icon after automatically dismissing permission prompts

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Site Identity, defect, P1)

Description

[Gerhard Großmann]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:63.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/63.0

Steps to reproduce:

Most of the time web notifications are annoying and intrusive – even more this message pane popping up to ask for permission. It can only be closed if I make a decision right now. Therefore I search for a way to block notifications by default – but still get informed that a website offers it.

I tried checking the checkbox in the permission options to block new requests for showing notifications.


Actual results:

With this setting checked I no longer get informed that a website offers notifications at all. But sometimes these notifications are very practical, e.g. on Skype, so I’d like to have a choice.


Expected results:

Although I don’t want to be asked for permissions when the website is loaded I want the possibility to decide that later. So I need to be informed about this option, e.g. with an icon in the url bar (like it’s done when content blocking is active or the website offers an RSS feed).

There’s a setting permissions.default.desktop-notification, but it seems to hide the informing icon when the value is not 0. I didn’t find a documentation and don’t know what it’s doing.

Comment 1

[Matthew N. [:MattN]]

I personally wanted it to work this way when we did our permission prompt redesign but UX was concerned we'd end up showing a bunch of icons with a strikethrough.

Comment 2

[Gerhard Großmann]

Attachment: Grey dot above the info icon

I can understand this argument, MattN. Personally I don’t think it’s that probable to get a bunch of icons because therefore a site has to request a lot of permissions. And that would reveal something about the website, too, so maybe it’s good to know for the user.

Alternative design idea:
At the moment there’s a grey dot on the [i] icon in the url bar when a site has permissions granted by default – in the attached screenshot because I decided in my settings that duckduckgo.com is allowed to save cookies permanently. This dot could have another colour (or/and form like × for accessibility) once at least one permission would have been requested but was blocked by default; compare with the orange dot over the download icon when a file transfer was interrupted.

Comment 3

[Monika Maheshwari [:MonikaMaheshwari]]

Hey, Can I work on this issue?

Comment 4

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

Hi Monika, this issue is a little too complicated and needs a bit too much UX consideration to be a good mentored bug. Thanks!

Comment 5

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

Attachment: Bug 1508961 - Show a notification icon after automatically dismissing permission prompts. r=MattN

This adds support for a "post-prompt" that appears dismissed (only the icon showing) when
the browser decides to automatically deny a permission request from a site (either based on
internal heuristics or because the user prefers not to receive permission prompts).

In order to move quickly and not overload the patch I have only implemented the post-prompting
for desktop-notification so far, however, implementing it for other permissions should be
a trivial follow-up.

Comment 6

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

Attachment: Bug 1508961 - Don't prematurely check for permissions in pushManager.subscribe() permission requests. r=lina

This permission checking should be handled by PermissionUI.jsm, to be able to apply custom heuristics
for denying the permission and also to be able to "post-prompt" after denying automatically.

Comment 7

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=try&revision=2cc67552815448d9f188767b77924bac4dbac660

Comment 8

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=try&revision=bfed9d0b269e5e63f868aa459efed48e905c6498

Comment 9

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=try&revision=4a42719d33863e41e1315229aa2e4a43c50043de

Comment 10

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/b73c90f76abd
Show a notification icon after automatically dismissing permission prompts. r=MattN
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/01fb911f1f2d
Don't prematurely check for permissions in pushManager.subscribe() permission requests. r=lina

Comment 11

[Bogdan Tara[:bogdan_tara | bogdant]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/b73c90f76abd
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/01fb911f1f2d

Comment 12

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

Comment on attachment 9054509 [details]
Bug 1508961 - Show a notification icon after automatically dismissing permission prompts. r=MattN

Beta/Release Uplift Approval Request

• User impact if declined: Needed for bug 1536454
• Is this code covered by automated tests?: Yes
• Has the fix been verified in Nightly?: No
• Needs manual test from QE?: No
• If yes, steps to reproduce:
• List of other uplifts needed: None
• Risk to taking this patch: Low
• Why is the change risky/not risky? (and alternatives if risky): This is preffed-off by default, has extensive tests and has baked for a long time on Nightly.
• String changes made/needed: None

Comment 13

[Pascal Chevrel:pascalc (PTO until April 26)]

Comment on attachment 9054509 [details]
Bug 1508961 - Show a notification icon after automatically dismissing permission prompts. r=MattN

Preffed off and spent 3 weeks on nightly before the uplift, approved for 67 beta 14, thanks.

Comment 14

[Sebastian Hengst [:aryx] (needinfo me if it's about an intermittent or backout)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/4b5a567ae62d
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/45360f538e3d