Originally posted this on the Firefox support forum (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1222676), and was advised to post this here as well.
At our Russell Group UK university, we rely on the ambient light sensor heavily for research projects on visual perception, smart devices, etc, using mobile devices for quick and easy variable-location tests. We have been able to do this because Firefox on Android (as far as we know - Chrome doesn't do it, Safari iOS doesn't either, and neither does Opera, to the best of our knowledge) was the only browser to allow access to the light sensor, which is incredibly useful. Now we understand that you have privacy concerns and thus wish to disable the ambient light sensor API completely, but this will completely grind to a halt some of our methods while we redevelop alternatives. We distribute these to participants of psychophysical tests, who so far were simply able to install Firefox on Android and the web-loaded app would just work. We were under the impression that such APIs would become more widely available over time, including other platforms and operating systems, not the other way around where you would end up planning to remove an incredibly useful feature. Please could you not disable the light sensor, surely there must be other ways, such as asking user permission for access just like you do with the cameras. Disabling the sensor API will be a gigantic step backwards, specially in the scientific community. (Adding on the above, previously there were indications of the browser community planning to extend sensor readings by introducing additional readable parameters such as camera exposure and white balance. This makes sense, and is a step forward. Similar steps forward would be to enhance sensor access, rather than the other way round.) On Sunday, 17 December 2017 15:30:06 UTC, Jonathan Kingston wrote: > I am suggesting the removal of both Ambient Light and Proximity Sensor APIs > via a preference so we can ensure there is no adverse impact to the web > with a quick mitigation if needed. > > If there are no issues with this, I plan to push the code early in the new > year to account for the holiday downtime. > > Previous attempts have been made to remove these APIs however this intent > to remove *does not* include Device Orientation which will need further > work to deprecate: > https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.platform/45XApRxACaM > > <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.platform/45XApRxACaM> > Previous thread: > https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/mozilla.dev.platform/ambient$20light|sort:relevance/mozilla.dev.platform/QI2-SO-1jxY/-CrSbuH-BAAJ > > The rationale: > > * These APIs have various privacy leaks, including violating the > same-origin policy, without the user being informed or interaction. > * These APIs do not match the current standards for sensor APIs > * There's no interest to address these shortcomings. (Mostly in the sense > of engineering resources and having other problems to tackle first.) > * As these are event-driven APIs the compatibility impact should be minimal > to none. The events simply won't fire. > > Work will be implemented here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/ > show_bug.cgi?id=1359076 > Thanks > Jonathan _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
