[whatwg] @sandbox and navigation top

[Ian Hickson]

On Fri, 12 Feb 2010, Adam Barth wrote:
>
> Can a frame in @sandbox ever navigation the top-level frame?

Not without a user prompt, currently.


> If not, that would make it hard to use @sandbox to contain 
> advertisements, which want to navigate |top| when the user clicks on the 
> ad.

On Fri, 12 Feb 2010, Michal Zalewski wrote:
> 
> Ads would want to be able to do that, but user-controlled gadgets 
> shouldn't.

On Fri, 12 Feb 2010, Adam Barth wrote:
> 
> Perhaps we want an "allow-frame-busting" directive?  In the 
> implementation we have an "allow-navigation" bit that covers navigation 
> |top| as well as window.open, etc.  Maybe we want a more general 
> directive that twiddles this bit?

On Sat, 13 Feb 2010, Michal Zalewski wrote:
> 
> I'm wondering if sites want to have control over the type of navigation: 
> navigating the top-level context versus opening a new window? In 
> particular, I am thinking about ads in embeddable gadgets (on social 
> sites, or in places such as Docs, Wave, etc): you do not want the gadget 
> to interfere with the presentation of the page by triggering disruptive 
> and unsolicited top frame transitions (as this could be used for a crude 
> DoS - in fact, IIRC, there is some history along these lines), but you 
> may be OK with a pop-up ad following a click.

On Sat, 13 Feb 2010, Adam Barth wrote:
> 
> Yeah, I think there are use cases for both top-level navigation and 
> window.open from sandboxed context.  I suspect there's some trade off 
> between complexity and fine-grained control.

On Sat, 13 Feb 2010, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> 
> Some may want to have a directive that allows only opening new windows 
> and not navigating the top level. This is the policy Caja tries to 
> enforce by default for instance. For ads I could imagine wanting only 
> top-level navigation and not window opening. So maybe this should be two 
> flags.

On Sat, 13 Feb 2010, Markus Ernst wrote:
> 
> An "allow-navigation" directive should IMO be ok. Given that a 
> navigation element is allowed in the context, the user experience should 
> actually not differ whether it is clicked in a sandboxed context or not.

Let's start with just frame busting, and then add the ability to open 
popups once we have more experience with frame busting.

I've added the keyword "allow-top-navigation" that allows pages to 
navigate their top-level browsing context.


> Some off-topic thoughts about this:
> 
> Most non-academic websites apply target="_blank" on all external links. 
> In order to allow a consistent user experience, it might be worth to 
> encourage UAs to offer the following user settings:
> 
> 1. "Open new tabs rather than windows"
> This should not only apply to windows opened with target="_blank" (as it 
> is already possible e.g. in Firefox), but also to the ones opened by 
> window.open().
> 
> 2. "Always open links to other domains in a new tab" (resp. window, if 
> the above option is not set)
> I would even encourage to set this as the default, as it is a de-facto 
> standard at least in commercial and community websites.

This seems like something that would belong in a UA UI guide, rather than 
the HTML5 spec. The spec doesn't even mention tabs.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
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