Intent to Ship: Require user interaction for notification permission prompts

[Johann Hofmann]

Starting from version 72, Firefox will require a user gesture when calling
Notification.requestPermission() [0] and PushManager.subscribe() [1].

Requests that do not follow a user gesture will be automatically denied. We
will, however, show a small UI indicator that can be used by Firefox users
to retroactively grant permission to the site. Starting from Firefox 71,
there will be a warning in the developer console.

This restriction was implemented and turned on by default in Nightly and
Beta earlier this year [2]. Until recently we ran a set of experiments and
studies around notification permission prompts.

We're making this change in order to improve the acceptance rate of
notification prompts in Firefox after running a number of user studies. The
details and rationale can be found in our blog post[3].

This change will be made in bug 1593644.

Please see the above linked blog post for more information and let me know
if you have any questions or concerns.

Thanks,

Johann

[0]
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Notification/requestPermission

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/PushManager/subscribe

[2]
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mozilla.dev.platform/15s-U_wXHeA/cekU32UyBwAJ

[3]
https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2019/11/04/restricting-notification-permission-prompts-in-firefox/

[sime....@gmail.com]

Let‘s assume that I want to show the notification prompt on my website as soon as possible. If I register event handlers for all click, tap, and key press events on the page, I should be able to trigger the notification prompt on the first such event from within the event handler, correct?

In other words, I’m waiting for *any* interaction from the person (e.g., clicking some text to select it, or a video play button, or a Like button), yes?

[Daniel Veditz]

You could, but we're making this change because our user studies show users
respond negatively to unexpected and unwanted prompts. If the users don't
associate their triggering interaction with a desire to accomplish the task
for which you're requesting permission they're still going to say "No" and
hate your site.

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