838106 - Add convenient & discoverable way to edit click-to-play per-site settings

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect)

Description

[Georg Fritzsche [:gfritzsche]]

Bug 775857 / bug 821892 will add proper ways to edit the site permissions, however those are not really discoverable.

We need a better way to either access those or to edit them directly.

If we are trying to reinforce the plugin notification icon & doorhanger as the main way to handle plugin permissions, we could presumably add e.g. 
* add a button there to access the settings or
* make the permissions in the doorhanger a persistent radiobox choice
* ...

Comment 1

[Benjamin Smedberg]

I'm not a UX designer, but I'm worried about overloading the doorhanger, and I suspect that a better place to put this would be in the addons manager. e.g. an "Exceptions..." link/button next to the tristate enable/CtP/disable settings.

Comment 2

[Larissa Co [:lco]]

What site permissions are you proposing to add to the doorhanger, other than:

1. Enable a particular plugin type
2. Enable all plugins on page
3. Always enable a particular plugin type
4. Always enable all plugins on page

I'm worried about overloading the doorhanger as well, but I'd like to understand what other plugin related UI is hidden in About:Permissions or preferences.

Comment 3

[Georg Fritzsche [:gfritzsche]]

(In reply to Larissa Co [:lco] from comment #2)
> What site permissions are you proposing to add to the doorhanger, other than:
> 
> 1. Enable a particular plugin type
> 2. Enable all plugins on page
> 3. Always enable a particular plugin type
> 4. Always enable all plugins on page

* (1) and (2) are temporary (only valid until reload/navigate),
* we don't currently have UI for (3)
* (4) is accessible through the doorhanger, but there is no obvious way to undo it

So the problem is discovering how to undo (4) -  while about:permissions and the Page-Info will be updated to allow editing what it does, they are rather hidden.

I wasn't necessarily proposing adding a lot to the doorhanger, maybe a shortcut from there to the relevant about:permission would be possible?

Comment 4

[Benjamin Smedberg]

What gfritzsche said, plus I've heard that we really might want to replace the current #4 with #3. And currently #4 is hidden behind a button option and I think we want to display it as primary UI.

Comment 5

[Georg Fritzsche [:gfritzsche]]

The new UI design for the click-to-play doorhanger obsoletes this. It will allow control over the permissions from the doorhanger itself.

Comment 6

[David E. Ross]

Is it necessary to use the doorhanger?  What if I want to change the settings when the doorhanger has not been triggered?

Comment 7

[Georg Fritzsche [:gfritzsche]]

(In reply to David E. Ross from comment #6)
> Is it necessary to use the doorhanger?  What if I want to change the
> settings when the doorhanger has not been triggered?

There will still be about:permissions and the page info.
For convenient access however the doorhanger should always be accessible via the notification icon if there is, or was, a plugin present.

If you want to follow the UI progress & discussion, this would be on the firefox-dev list:
https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/firefox-dev

Comment 8

[Larissa Co [:lco]]

(In reply to David E. Ross from comment #6)
> Is it necessary to use the doorhanger?  What if I want to change the
> settings when the doorhanger has not been triggered?

As Georg mentioned in comment 7, the CtP icon will always be present on the page (regardless of whether the plugin is enabled or not). Clicking on the icon will reveal the doorhanger. So you don't have to wait for the doorhanger to appear in order to change the setting.