[whatwg] Geolocation API Proposal

timeless timeless at gmail.com
Fri Mar 21 07:14:39 PDT 2008


On Mar 19, 2008, at 8:44 PM, Benjamin West wrote:
> What use cases are drive this proposal?
> If the use case is for user agents to describe their geographical
> location to applications, then one possible solution is to wield web
> architecture, and use an HTTP header.
> User agents might send something like:
>
>    X-Agent-Lat: 1234123
>    X-Agent-Lon: -2132362
>
> This frames the problem in terms of an application being interested in
> the properties of the client, instead of the client needing to know
> about properties of the client so they can eventualy send a request to
> an application with the same information.

On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 8:16 AM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs at apple.com> wrote:
>  Geolocation is often an expensive operation in terms of power
>  consumption, so it's better not to determine the answer until someone
>  asks. Otherwise you needlessly drain the battery. Thus a script API is
>  preferred to HTTP request headers since it is on demand.

not to mention privacy concerns. automatically sending out the user's
coordinates just because their device supports gps isn't a good idea.

and do you send it to third party servers? should doubleclick be able
to automatically target their ads based on precise location?



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