Re-evaluating tor browser's security controls: let's have one place to adjust all per-tab, global, persistent, and per-session security preferences.
= Background =
Currently, it's hard to get Tor Browser to do behave the way that you want. And the controls for these security preferences are scattered across dialogues that are asked once, the security slider, and the noscript extension. We should combine this all in a way that makes sense, adding and removing some options if need be.
The document that sparked this discussion is here. The document suggests re-evaluate what buttons are in the toolbar, and what purposes they would serve. While this is definitely a part of the project, the purpose of the project is to organize the security controls, not design the toolbar. We also do not plan to respond to all the proposed changes, and took inspiration from a subset of them.
= Objective =
We're trying to fix the following problems:
- user confusion with what settings is global and what is for a tab
- all features are hidden under one icon or under the security preferences (which is buried)
- the settings overlap and need to be used together (security slider + noscript), which is hard
- in general, the buttons at the top (NoScript, torbutton) are confusing
- the buttons don't have a 1:1 corespondence with what users need
= Discussion points =
- What do users want to be able to toggle, but cannot?
- Does the current design allow for any mistakes? (i.e. leaving the security slider on low all the time so that it's more convenient when visiting one website regularly)
- Should we prioritize building a mental model/guiding user behavior (putting tab specific settings in toolbar, global settings in preferences) or should we cater to what users want to do most (putting most used things in toolbar, less used things in preferences)?
- how many buttons should there be in the tool bar, in what order, with what icons?