[Ratings & Reviews Prompt] Encourage UAs to give the option of never prompting

[domenic]

I'd encourage this spec to have a "should" level requirement that UAs allow a configuration mode that never prompts for reviews (i.e. always returns disallowed, with no user interruption).

To some folks, these review prompts are quite annoying and interrupting. Personally, whenever I get one, I take the time to go leave a one-star review saying "This stupid app interrupted my attempts to use it to get me to leave this review. So, automatic one-star." Judging by my sibling one-star reviews, I'm not the only one who does this.

On the web platform, we generally take a stronger stand against abuse and user annoyance than many native platforms. So I hope implementations of this API allow turning off such prompting. IMO the ideal place for this would be a checkbox below the currently-depicted "Don't ask again for this app", which instead says something like "Don't ask again for any apps installed by Microsoft Edge". (But that is, of course, a per-browser UI decision.)

Otherwise, I think the introduction of this API will likely depress PWA installation for at least some users, since avoiding installation seems like it will be the only way to stay safe from these prompts in the current design.

[aarongustafson]

Agree on allowing users to turn off this feature at the browser-level. I’ll make a note.

[comp615]

Kind of a related comment I had that I'm putting here because I think it's very similar.

Even if the user does allow prompting or it's the default, it should also be encouraged to have prompting criteria (similar to app install banner). In the spec, it says if the user was handed off, it always returns completed for the session. But if the UA is refreshed, I wonder if it should still return completed for a period of time. Or conversely, if prompted and the user defers, should the browser continue to return deferred for a certain duration.

Alternatively, should there be another result string ("browser_deferred" but that name is terrible) where the browser understood the request but chose not to show the user based on its heuristic.