[whatwg] Geolocation in the browser

Gervase Markham gerv at mozilla.org
Thu Feb 22 07:07:58 PST 2007


Ryan Sarver wrote:
> The biggest problem with this implementation is that it requires an
> additional service on top of standard GPS. 

I wasn't envisaging any geocoding services. In my example, the address 
would be one the user had entered, and (assuming the machine has GPS at 
all) the browser had remembered as being at particular GPS coordinates. 
For desktop machines which never move, the browser may well have 
geocoded a typed-in address once and stored the lat/long to give to 
websites.

If the machine has GPS, the default option in the dropdown might be 
"Here: <lat>, <long>". But there would be other options. I think it's 
important that the user be able to give a location other than his 
current one - for example, if he's at work, but looking for the closest 
pizza restaurant to his home.

The "granularity" setting is for privacy; I was imagining that the 
browser would round the actual value to the nearest whatever was 
appropriate, in order to introduce the necessary degree of uncertainty.

Gerv



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