672391 - Warn, educate or communicate the faults for deselecting site specific permissions

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

Attachment: Site specific permissions

Currently when you install a web application the user is presented with a dialog to select or unselect site specific permissions. The choices a user may make may be damaging towards the web application at hand. This is worse if the user is not warned or educated, and it may be implied that leaving all permissions off could lead to unexpected behaviours. 

For example, in the Angry Birds screenshot attached. Will the application function correctly if the user does not allow 'Location aware browsing' or will it be damaging? What if offline data-storage is only selected, etc.

I'm wondering if in the UI, there can be a description of what each permission does with some real life examples, and perhaps warn the user that not granting all requested permissions may lead to unexpected behaviour with the application at hand.

Curious what UX/UI folks think about this.

Comment 1

[[:fabrice] Fabrice Desré]

I agree there's some explanations to add here. The dialog allows the user to pre-enable the permissions an app needs. In the Angry Birds example, if you don't select "Offline data storage", he we get the usual permission prompt when running the application. Not selecting it doesn't break anything.

I think this model is better than eg. the android permissions model since it allows the user to set or revoke permissions both before installing or at run-time.