Application vs. browser

[martinthomson]

Feedback from discussions today was that the distinction between "browser tab" and "application window" was not something that was completely obvious. While the distinction is still relevant from an implementation perspective, the suggestion was to remove the differentiation in the user consent dialog and the API.

This avoids applications needing to be able to know, a priori, whether an application is needed vs. the browser. For those apps that have access to browser sharing, that would allow us to show a unified selection dialog (using crosshair-based selection complicates things a little, but we are unlikely to start with that).

[keithgrif]

Is the concern that if a browser has multiple tabs open that you want the user to be able to choose a specific one to share but not advertise/display the title of other tabs?

[martinthomson]

One concern that Patrick L raised was that application sharing is less good from a surprise/security perspective. We want to ensure that sharing is appropriately scoped.

Say that you have PowerPoint with several decks open. It might be that when you select the "application" for sharing, material from a window you don't intend to share might be visible. That's not a positive experience. This is exacerbated by the poor selection process (a drop-down) that we are going to see for a while yet.

The browser is similar. Sharing the entire browser means that you can't switch tabs. It also means that you inadvertently share tab titles. A narrower share avoids problems of this nature in the browser context.