Re: [w3c/permissions] Add another permission state "always-ask" (from one-time grants)? (Issue #414)

Hi, sorry for the delay, I just got back from vacation! Let me try to address each point.

> I'm still not sure why it isn't the website that is remembering that they have shown the UI.

The pragmatic answer is: they just aren't.

Sites have had years to solve this, and haven't. They're not going to put in the effort for minority permission models, or their incentives are poor (sites understandably prefer more permission), or both. Whatever the reason, It seems time to declare defeat on the idea that sites will remember one-time permissions on their own, and there are no signs they ever will.

> They can use cookies or local storage to persist whether a user has previously been successfully primed. 

It's not that simple in practice. Permissions outlive local storage in most browsers. They're _user settings_ separate from "site data" in most browsers. E.g. Safari can share them across devices:

<img width="339" alt="image" src="https://github.com/w3c/permissions/assets/3136226/9ee43fe3-bacd-4b6b-9850-1ce1a1ee33fe">

Additionally, a subset of privacy sensitive users run with settings like this one in Firefox:

<img width="478" alt="image" src="https://github.com/w3c/permissions/assets/3136226/c91b759c-ae03-41ba-af64-1729c64c89ad">

...which defeats any localStorage-based solution, making it unattractive to web devs, who understandably prefer permissions as a more reliable signal.

>  it's still appropriate for the API to return "prompt" because it will prompt.

Let me address this semantic challenge. Years ago I recall an internal all-hands meeting at Mozilla where we concluded it was an unfortunate mistake that ["prompt"](https://w3c.github.io/permissions/#dfn-states) was the default value in this spec (I believe @annevk was there). We felt it would have been better if something like `"default"` was the default, leaving the other states `"granted"`, `"denied"` and `"prompt"` to always represent actual user choices. Here's `Tools / Page Info` in Firefox which I think illustrates this well (always ask = prompt):

<img width="733" alt="image" src="https://github.com/w3c/permissions/assets/3136226/b7bf4083-68e2-45e4-9f4b-e945be2a8a6a">

Of course it's clearly too late to undo that choice now, hence this request for a new `"always-ask"` value.

I think `"always-ask"` has a nice ring to it because it represents a user choice. Of course it doesn't mean the user won't ever change their mind later, but that's the setting right now: always ask, until I change this setting.

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Received on Tuesday, 15 August 2023 20:56:17 UTC