1642120 - Embed the floating audio / video conferencing indicator widget into the decorations (tab bar) of each window instead of blocking arbitrary screen space

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Site Permissions, enhancement)

Description

[Jeff Fortin]

Attachment: Screenshot from 2020-05-30 10-30-25.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Fedora; Linux x86_64; rv:76.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/76.0

Steps to reproduce:

Start any WebRTC videoconferencing system such as meet.jit.si

Actual results:

Firefox's webrtcIndicator shows up as a system-toplevel floating window widget on an arbitrary screen location without letting me move it, with no explanation about why it needs to be there, and without letting me click through it for widgets it obscures.

The attached screenshot demonstrates how it actively prevents me from using my system toolbars/panels/taskbars/docks. This thing decided to put itself in the middle (but not even the "exact middle") of the top of my display, which just so happens to be where I have my taskbar/dock with launchers with GNOME Shell's "dash to panel" extension (otherwise, the clickable notifications widget would be what's underneath there), and so I can't even click/launch the applications underneath!

Expected results:

I understand that this widget exists as a security/privacy indicator and that it is not meant to be turned off, but there's no reason why it needs to be floating toplevel on an arbitrary location on my screens instead of being, say, attached prominently to every Firefox window. Besides, it just "looks" broken to the average user who doesn't know why things are the way they are.

This would make much more sense if it was put as a non-removable thing in the toolbars of every open Firefox window.

Comment 1

[Jeff Fortin]

Attachment: Mockup of the Firefox webrtcIndicator embedded into the tab bar before the pinned tabs

Here's a proposed visual approach.

In addition, to make it more useful and clearer what this is about, if the user has the mouse hover over that yellow webrtcIndicator, there should be a tooltip (ex.: GtkTooltip) that explains what's going on, saying something like 'The tab "{tab_name}" in this* window is currently accessing your webcam and microphone. Switch to that tab to change its permissions, or close the tab." but that could be a separate enhancement request, as the current webrtcIndicator doesn't even do that.

*: or "another window" depending on the case

Comment 2

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Bugbug thinks this bug should belong to this component, but please revert this change in case of error.

Comment 3

[Paul Zühlcke [:pbz]]

Thanks for the suggestion! I understand how the current webRTC indicator can get in the way for certain applications or system toolbars. A new indicator is already in the works, see Bug 1642799. The new indicator can be moved and also minimized.