Privacy/Features/Site-based data management UI

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Status

Site-based data management UI
Stage	Shipped
Status	Complete
Release target	Firefox 6
Health	OK
Status note	Landed on mozilla-central.

Team

Product manager	Asa Dotzler
Directly Responsible Individual	Sid Stamm
Lead engineer	Margaret Leibovic
Security lead	Curtis Koenig
Privacy lead	Sid Stamm
Localization lead	`
Accessibility lead	`
QA lead	George Carstoiu
UX lead	Jennifer Boriss
Product marketing lead	`
Operations lead	`
Additional members	`

Open issues/risks

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Stage 1: Definition

1. Feature overview

It's helpful to be able to control what sites know and do on a site-by-site basis. Ideally, the site permissions dialog, cookie controls, and various other site-based preferences should be accessible via a single UI.

This feature will provide a UI in a content tab (much like the addons manager) that allows users to customize permissions and settings for sites on a site-by-site basis.

This feature falls primarily in the Experience category (from the "Discover, Experience, and Connect" vision statement.)

2. Users & use cases

Empower users to define data-sharing relationships with sites instead of with the various APIs in Firefox
Provide a secure, non-spoofable way to set these preferences.
Make it clear to users how they interact with each site (and all sites)
Assure users that the interface is part of Firefox and cannot be manipulated by a web site.

3. Dependencies

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4. Requirements

We need to document existing data sources and mappings to the user interface
UI must be designed carefully, perhaps with a user study
Security and authenticity of the configuration UI must be verified and accessible to users.

Non-goals

This is not an enhancement of the site identity door-hanger (Larry)
This is not a new set of preferences or permissions, just a new interface to existing ones.
This is not a visualization of how people interact with sites
This is not in-flight configuration prompts or UX.

Stage 2: Design

5. Functional specification

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6. User experience design

There's a design motivation and prototype graphic in attachment 452384 on bug 573176.

The site-based prefs will be implemented in content at an about page (about:permissions). It will be in-content (much like [about:addons]), and is intended to replace the various site-based or "all-sites" prefs and permissions that exist for:

cookies
passwords
geolocation permission
storage (IndexDB, localStorage)
add-on installation permission
pop-up blocking
image loading permission
HTTP Strict-Transport-Security setting
(history and bookmarks)? Maybe?

The UI will present a list of sites, searchable, ranked by frecency, complete with domain or subdomain name, site title, and favicon. When a user selects a site, the preferences for that site will be displayed, and the user will have the opportunity to change the preferences for that specific domain or subdomain.

The UI will include the ability to sites not yet accessed; this will provide pre-access preferences for those users who wish to block images from specific sites or assert control before it is needed.

Stage 3: Planning

7. Implementation plan

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8. Reviews

Security review

Security Notes

Privacy review

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Localization review

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Accessibility

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Quality Assurance review

Remaining opened bugs
Main implementation bugs landed and were verified
Smaller patches to land in the following milestones

Operations review

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Stage 4: Development

9. Implementation

[DONE] implement basic patch
[DONE] create basic test plan
[DONE] land patch for wider testing
[NEW] user study?
[ON TRACK] design UX
[ON TRACK] document data sources and mappings to UX
[NEW] security / privacy design discussion

bug 573176 Implement basic about:permissions interface
bug 657961 Use async API to get favicons for site permissions page

bug 587208 Need to create icons for the UI
bug 658097 Make permissions language easier to understand
bug 588689 Add access to site preferences from the site identity block

Stage 5: Release

10. Landing criteria

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Feature details

Priority	P1
Rank	999
Theme / Goal	Enhance User Controlled Disclosure
Roadmap	Privacy
Secondary roadmap	`
Feature list	Desktop
Project	`
Engineering team	Desktop front-end

Team status notes

	status	notes
Products	`	`
Engineering	`	`
Security	sec-review-complete	Notes
Privacy	`	`
Localization	`	`
Accessibility	`	`
Quality assurance	Ready to land in Fx6	main bugs are verified
User experience	`	`
Product marketing	`	`
Operations	`	`