Re: Permissions UI & Necessary API

On 25/04/14 19:15, Marcos Caceres wrote:
>
> On April 25, 2014 at 9:29:02 AM, Doug Reeder (reeder_29@yahoo.com) wrote:
>> If you haven't read it, Brenden Mulligan's article on "The Right Way To Ask Users For iOS
>> Permissions" lays out what I would consider to be current best practice (for all systems,
>> not just iOS): http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/04/the-right-way-to-ask-users-for-ios-permissions/
>>   
>> Currently, there is a huge divide between app permission UI and system permission UI.
>> Asking the user twice is suboptimal. I think the best UI would be a system dialog, with
>> a box containing text from the app explaining what application task the permission is
>> needed to accomplish. That would require an API with a field to pass a plain text string.
> I agree with what Anssi said. It's too easy for people to lie given a text string. I prefer the approach that is taken in the article which appears to basically be the Web's security model. As Anssi also said, and as shown in the article, one can just create temporary prompts to help mitigate the user denying access to privileges they would otherwise require - and that those prompts are displayed at the appropriate time when the user needs to perform an action.
>
> Having said that, it's pretty clever what they've done in application. I really like how they hook in contacts by setting up an expectation.

Moving the explanation to the app's content won't stop apps from lying, 
so I don't find that to be a compelling argument.   It is up to 
reviewers and curators of app stores to ascertain when an app is 
misleading users or otherwise falls foul of the app store's requirements.

A more compelling argument is that app developers will want control of 
how the justification for using a given capability is presented to the 
user.  This further suggests the requirement for apps to determine which 
of the following apply:

    a. user has yet to be asked for a decision
    b. user has previously granted permission
    c. user has explicitly denied permission

Without this information, it would be hard for developers to provide the 
appropriate user experience. Does FirefoxOS offer developers this info?

p.s. if the user previously granted the permission just this time, the 
situation is essentially (a) in that attempting to access the capability 
now will result in the browser asking the user for permission.

-- 
Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org> http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett

Received on Saturday, 26 April 2014 09:53:12 UTC