Re: Proposal for output device selection

On 08/20/2013 06:43 PM, Martin Thomson wrote:
> On 20 August 2013 01:21, Harald Alvestrand <harald@alvestrand.no> wrote:
>> Would it make more sense to have a separate "get permissions" call, which
>> took as argument an explicit enumeration of the kinds of resources the
>> script wanted (input devices, output devices, cameras, microphones, screen
>> captures...)?
>>
>> Then it would be the job of the UA to figure out how to message the request
>> for permissions appropriately, and there would only be (at most) one
>> permissions prompt per origin as long as requested permissions did not
>> change.
>>
>> For backwards compatibility with existing getUserMedia, we could say that
>> getUserMedia implicitly called "get permissions"(audio if set, video if set)
>> if "get permissions" hadn't been called before.
>
> I don't think so.  That sort of permissions model, most notably used
> in relation to app installation in Android, is fairly widely regarded
> as a bit of a failure.  See for instance:
> http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~afelt/felt-androidpermissions-soups.pdf
>
I'm happy to abandon it in favour of something with a proven success
record.....

One advantage of combining all requests to the user for permissions to a
single point in time is that adding the "minor" resources (device
listing) to the critical resources (video, audio) doesn't increase the
number of things the user has to consider; it's still only one prompt,
not multiple of them.


-- 
Surveillance is pervasive. Go Dark.

Received on Wednesday, 21 August 2013 17:27:13 UTC