Re: Permissions API

On 09/02/2015 05:21 PM, Mathieu Hofman wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
>  
>
> I searched previous discussions but couldn’t find anything. Is there
> any plans to expose the audio/video/screen capture permissions granted
> by the user as part of the Permissions API [1].
>
> Right now an application could guess if it has permissions using the
> enumerateDevices and see if the label is blank or not, but that’s
> quite hacky.
>

The subject of permissions has been discussed quite a few times in the
past, most recently in March 2015 (subject line: "Conditions for long
term permission grants").

We haven't discussed much of the permissions API, since that's a
relatively new idea, but my memory tells me that we've identified the
following problems with it in previous discussions:

- As defined, it is geared towards a small set of global permissions.
WebRTC has either a global permission, a permission per device type, or
a permission per device, depending on implementation choice - Chrome and
Firefox differ here, and there's no consensus to require a global
permission.
The mechanism of "derived permission descriptor" may help here - but
definition work is needed.

- The status of a permission is "granted", "denied" or "prompt".
WebRTC's model has "granted", "denied", "prompt" and "granted
permanently". It's not clear, however, whether that needs to be surfaced
at the API at all.

I think the permissions API shows a promise to simplify the model of how
we work with permissions, so that we don't have to design them anew
every time - but I think getting a permissions model for Media Capture
requires discussion based on a concrete proposal - and given the time,
it seems logical to target such a description at an extension spec
rather than part of this revision of the core spec.

I'd welcome discussion of what such a permissions model should look like
- but I think it's sensible to ask for a proposal to base that
discussion on, rather than starting from a "blank slate".


>  
>
> Mathieu
>
>  
>
> [1] https://w3c.github.io/permissions/#permission-registry
>


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