1802786 - camera/microphone icon behaviour depends on permission permanence

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Site Permissions, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Felix Pahl]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:107.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/107.0

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open https://mozilla.github.io/webrtc-landing/gum_test.html
2. Remove any camera/microphone permissions for the domain
3. Click "Camera" or "Microphone"
4. do or don't check "Remember this decision"
5. Click "Allow"
6. Click "Stop"

Actual results:

If you check "Remember this decision", the device icon in the address bar disappears when you click "Stop"; only the settings icon next to it remains. If you don't check "Remember this decision", the device icon only turns from red to white but remains in the address bar when you click "Stop".

Expected results:

I would expect the device icon behaviour to be independent of whether the permission was granted permanently. If anything, the need to alert you to the granted permission while the device isn't being used would seem higher, not lower, if the permission was granted permanently.

Comment 1

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

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Site Permissions' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Rares Doghi, Desktop QA]

It seems that this is intended behavior, it seems that we do this to warn about microphone and camera grace periods, we dont do that when we check the Remember this decision is checked.

I'm opening it as an enhancement since its something that our users might want and maybe one of our devs can take a look and might decide to change the intended behavior.

Comment 3

[Jan-Ivar Bruaroey [:jib] (needinfo? me)]

It seems that this is intended behavior, it seems that we do this to warn about microphone and camera grace periods, we dont do that when we check the Remember this decision is checked.

This is correct. The rationale was people who check the box have laxer safety requirements than people who don't, because they're indicating they trust the site.

Said differently, people who check the box indicate they've decided to trust this site to turn on camera at any point, and don't need constant reminding of that decision.

That said, it's fair to challenge this decision: It would unquestionably be safer to remind users that they have in fact made this decision in the past by always showing the black camera icon to them whenever visiting a site with persistent camera permission, on pageload.

Is that what you expect?

Expected results:

I would expect the device icon behaviour to be independent of whether the permission was granted permanently. If anything, the need to alert you to the granted permission while the device isn't being used would seem higher, not lower, if the permission was granted permanently.

When I first read this, it sounds like you're hedging, but I infer from the second sentence here that you would prefer if the user was shown an indicator even when granting persistent permission. Is that correct?

If yes, if you revisit this page later, would you then expect to see the camera immediately on pageload?

Comment 4

[Jan-Ivar Bruaroey [:jib] (needinfo? me)]

Note anything I say here also applies to "microphone". I just find it simpler to talk about "camera" only since they work the same.

Comment 5

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

Clear a needinfo that is pending on an inactive user.

Inactive users most likely will not respond; if the missing information is essential and cannot be collected another way, the bug maybe should be closed as INCOMPLETE.

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