Re: [mediacapture-main] Camera light and "disabled" tracks

The spec is not talking about the camera light. Not all cameras have 
lights, and when they do, they may not always be pointing at user, and
 may not be visible. Microphones don't have lights.

The spec is talking about both cameras and microphones in all the text
 quoted, and is talking about in-browser indicators, which all 
implementations have AFAIK.

The spec language appears to already have some fidelity here, 
distinguishing between two indicators: "on-air recording" and "device 
accessible". The spec says the first one can be dropped during mute. 
It does not say the second one can be dropped. This seems to cover the
 privacy concern to me.

The first one, from its names warns about the device actually being on
 and recording. Since we're not recording if we're muted, dropping it,
 as the spec allows, makes sense, so I believe that's its definition.

About the second one, little else is written, and we should probably 
fix that. But taking a guess, the only other concern I could see a 
user having that may warrant an indicator, would be to warn of a 
site's power to resume recording.

For a browser without persistent permissions - and the spec has to 
make sense for those as well - the natural conclusion is that this 
second indicator would go away when the track stops, the point at 
which it can no longer resume recording (the spec fails to mention 
this, it probably should).

Of course a UX may combine these two indicators into a single one, say
 a camera icon that's visible during access, with an optional slash 
through it (four states).

Wrt persistent permissions, one could argue when it says "granted 
access to the source" whether "access" means "permission" as opposed 
to "accessing device" - and that might, as with persistent permission,
 a site may also "resume" recording at any point, so to speak - though
 no current implementation appears to have such an indicator on 
pageload for pages with persistent permission already (Chrome has a 
camera icon in the URL field which lingers after access ends, but not 
before it starts, though it has a function, so not sure about its 
signal intent).

I've already filed 
https://github.com/w3c/mediacapture-main/issues/387, maybe we could 
mention when "device access" indicator should go away there?

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Received on Friday, 2 September 2016 04:46:51 UTC