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WICG / idle-detection

A proposal for an idle detection and notification API for the web
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Idle Detection API should allow for limiting to an origin #36

Closed tomayac closed 3 years ago

tomayac commented 3 years ago

"[The Idle Detection API] should support customizing the detection scheme. It should also allow to just specify "detect if user has the tab focused, and is interacting with the document". In that scenario it shouldn't prompt (there's no privacy concern because you can already implement that on your own). It should definitely keep prompting for what it does right now: detecting idle state across tabs & OS apps — not only that, it should explicitly say in the prompt that it'll do this (which I didn't know about when I read it at first)."—via @dwelle on https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw/pull/2877#issuecomment-771989647 in https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw/pull/2877.

This could look like the following snippet and would only cover tabs opened to the mentioned origin and thus not report on activity in other non-browser apps or non-related tabs, and likewise allow for no assumptions about the screenState—and due to its reduced powers not require permissions, since the same can be implemented client-side today.

const controller = new AbortController();
const signal = controller.signal;
const idleDetector = new IdleDetector();
idleDetector.start({
  threshold: 60_000,
  signal: signal,
  origin: 'example.com', // 🆕
});
reillyeon commented 3 years ago

Since sites can polyfill this behavior is it worth adding complexity to the API to support this?

tomayac commented 3 years ago

Counter argument: jQuery was a "polyfill" to what became Web platform APIs. Since polyfilling this feature typically involves setting up many listeners, it can be easy to shoot oneself in the foot when one forgets to remove them. If done at the browser level, there is also potential for a more performant or less taxing implementation.

dwelle commented 3 years ago

I believe it's much better if the work is done right once by the browsers, rather than [potentially] suboptimally (as @tomayac pointed out) thousands (or more) of times over by people who want this behavior. And since Idle Detection API now exists, it's a perfect fit to implement this browser-side.

tomayac commented 3 years ago

In the Devices and Sensors WG meeting at TPAC the following was decided:

  • tomayac: is there a plan to have this limited to an origin? … I implemented this for a popular PWA and they do not need all the features of the API, only for their own origin
  • reillyg: my feeling is that since this can be polyfilled, it doesn't seem worthwhile to increase the complexity of the API