Mockups of the Webcam and Mic Controls for WebRTC in Firefox 18

Mozilla has pledged to have full WebRTC support in Firefox 18. Some work has been done up to this point, but there's still plenty to be done. Firefox already has support for the getUserMedia API, which provides access to the webcam and the microphone, but it is not enabled by default.

That's because the privacy controls haven't been implemented just yet. But we have an idea of what it's going to look like thanks to a few mockups of the controls, at least the Mac OS X version.

Obviously, sites will have to get permission before accessing either the webcam or the mic.

Users will have to approve the request, but will also be notified after this when the streaming starts and during it.

This is to ensure that they don't just click on the permissions button and forget about it. Given the sensitive nature of the feature, it's understandable.

You can check out the mockup of the permission dialog, for Mac OS X coming from Mozilla's UX designer Jennifer Morrow.

Once the streaming starts, users will also be notified that their webcam or mic is being used, even if they move to another tab.

The tab that has access to the webcam or mic and is using them will be highlighted with a green line on top as well as a green icon.

These will be displayed whether the tab is active or not.

Of course, access to the webcam or mic is just the first step. WebRTC requires more than that, though most of the work is under the hood, the user won't get to see much besides these warnings and notifications.

The UI for the actual calls will be handled by the websites that implement the feature, which makes sense as they'd want freedom in implementing the UI they believe works best for their product and their users.