That would be amazing, but it would never happen. Mom and Pop would always click "no" out of fear of the unknown, and my awesome feature wouldn't get used! It has to be enabled by default, they don't know what they're missing!
That's literally the opposite of the concern with permission prompts: all the evidence from years of SSL/TLS certificate errors is that users will blindly grant permission.
This is true -- and it may also be the same for miscellaneous permissions. But that doesn't mean it won't be used as an excuse by the feature developers.
Honestly though, this is just me being bitter at web developers.
That’s already how the browser microphone/camera API and notification API work, though. At this point, it’s the expectation/default for new APIs to act this way. The browser makers would just have to be convinced to align the behaviour of these slightly-older APIs to the best-practice UX paradigm for new APIs.
Right. Firefox is open source. Why is nobody adding prompts for Web Sockets, WebGL, Web Assembly and all the new stuff that a security / privacy concerned user has at least mixed feelings about. Prompts are not a good solution for a wider audience, but at least they satisfy the curiosity of power users and offer the possibility to leave the site if you get the feeling it's too dodgy.
