[whatwg] Geolocation in the browser

[Ryan Sarver]

Steve, good points...

 

It's also important to remember that this functionality would be an opt-in system - unlike your cell phone :) The prototype that we are working on would allow the browser to point to a COM port where it could find a GPS device or any NMEA-compatible device or software. It would then read the NMEA stream over the COM port and use that to deliver the user's location to the website via the DOM.

 

Our software positions you based on WiFi triangulation and can emulate a GPS device by streaming NMEA over  a virtual COM port so that the user wouldn't need to have a dedicated GPS antennae.

 

From: Steve Runyon [mailto:s.runyon at gmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2007 4:48 PM
To: Ryan Sarver
Subject: Re: [whatwg] Geolocation in the browser

 

Makes sense to me.  And while the privacy issues that others have brought up are real, it does seem doable to make it user-configurable.  Perhaps the first time the user hits a site that wants to know where they are they have the more-or-less standard "disallow/allow this time/always allow" options?  

 

And as with cell phones (which in the US at least must include location info when the user dials 911 for help), there should be reasonable guarantees that intelligence agencies and law enforcement can't activate the locator unbeknownst to the user without a search warrant. 

 

On 2/21/07, Ryan Sarver <rsarver at skyhookwireless.com> wrote: 

That's a good point. I think you're right that the "navigator" object might make more sense:

 

// Example

var location = navigator.getLocation()

alert(location.latitude+', '+location.longitude);

 

thoughts?

 

From: Steve Runyon [mailto:s.runyon at gmail.com ] 
Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2007 4:27 PM
To: Ryan Sarver
Subject: Re: [whatwg] Geolocation in the browser

 

You couldn't use window.location because that's already used:  "the location object represents information about the URL of any currently open window or of a specific frame" (Danny Goodman, JavaScript Bible 4e, p 486).  How about the navigator object? 



 

On 2/21/07, Ryan Sarver <rsarver at skyhookwireless.com> wrote: 

David,

The ICBM standard is for geotagging the actual content whereas we are talking about a standard that lets the content know the location of the User or device so that the website can be location-aware. 

I want to use as much of the existing standards, but have more questions about where it should exist in ecosystem and how servers and webpages would expect to see it and use it.

-----Original Message-----
From: David Latapie [mailto:david at empyree.org]
Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2007 3:56 PM
To: Ryan Sarver 
Cc: whatwg at lists.whatwg.org 
Subject: Re: [whatwg] Geolocation in the browser

On Wed, 21 Feb 2007 15:31:11 -0500, Ryan Sarver wrote: 
>  - would it make sense to also expose it in the request headers? This
> way the server receives it on the first request as opposed to through 
> the client after the initial page request
>
> 
>
> User-Geolocation: 43.338018, -71.817930

Surely you've heard of ICBM
(<meta name="ICBM" content="46.025507, 14.300186" />)

Could elaborate on what you like and dislike on this? 
--
</david_latapie>             U+0F00
http://blog.empyree.org/en (English)
http://blog.empyree.org/fr (Français)
http://blog.empyree.org/sl (Slovensko)

 

 

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