[webkit-dev] Notifications API

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On May 22, 2009, at 10:19 AM, John Gregg wrote:

> Sure.  We have the following plan for how to handle opt-in:
>  - Use of the feature by script, if permission isn't granted to the  
> origin, should throw an exception, not present permissions UI.  So  
> your insistent porn site would have no effect on the user.
>  - A dialog box asking for permission should only appear in response  
> to a user gesture like a click.  So in the normal case, an  
> application will present a user with a link "New: Desktop Calendar  
> Notifications available!  Click here to setup."  And that link will  
> present a prompt from the user-agent "Do you trust calendar.com?   
> The site wants to display notifications on your desktop.  [Yes/No]"   
> If the user says yes, script running under that origin will have  
> permission to show desktop notifications.

To expose this flow, wouldn't you need a method in the API exposed to  
JavaScript that requests permission for notifications, rather than  
actually posting a notification? I don't see such a method in the  
submitted patch. It would not make sense for a link labeled "New:  
Desktop Calendar Notifications available!  Click here to setup" to  
actually display a notification itself, I wouldn't think.

Having a JavaScript API to request permissions, along with plumbing  
through the WebKit layer to allow a WebKit embedder to suitably prompt  
the user, would address most of my concerns.

> - Permission should be removable through a menu which is accessible  
> from the notification UI itself.

Seems like this part would indeed be outside WebKit.

> As proposed the permissions policy is somewhat external to WebKit,  
> which contains the Javascript API layer but not the actual user- 
> visible parts of the system including UI, permissions flow, and  
> filtering by origin which will be in Chromium or another user agent.

I think it implies a requirement for API that's not in the patch.

Regards,
Maciej


>
>
>  -John
>
>
> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 11:39 PM, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
> On Thu, 21 May 2009, John Gregg wrote:
> >
> > On the security question, a substantial amount of thought has gone  
> into
> > how to prevent unwanted popups (and in general how to control  
> access to
> > HTML5 application features).  We think user opt-in on an origin- 
> basis is
> > the best policy and it's what we plan to do in Chromium; the WebKit
> > interfaces are structured so that the policy is up to the user  
> agent via
> > a NotificationProvider interface.
>
> Could you elaborate on what you mean by "user opt-in"? A prompt or
> "installation" step seems like a poor user experience given that any  
> site
> could start asking for this, and we don't want users to click "yes" to
> make the message go away (consider a porn site that just does "while
> notifications are not allowed, try to notify").
>
> --
> Ian Hickson               U+1047E                ) 
> \._.,--....,'``.    fL
> http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _ 
> \  ;`._ ,.
> Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'-- 
> (,_..'`-.;.'
>
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