[whatwg] Geolocation in the browser

[Ryan Sarver]

Hey guys. I have been watching the list for a bit and thought it was
time for me to jump in here and kick off a discussion on
geolocation-aware browsing. I tried to search through the archives to
see if the discussion had come up before and didn't find anything, so
please forgive me if it has.

 

I am the Dir of Product Development at Skyhook Wireless where we have a
Wi-Fi Positioning System - think GPS, but software-only and uses
Wireless APs instead of satellites. We have been working on developing a
plugin for Firefox that gives a website access to the user's location
via javascript. User's can control access to this information at the
domain level in much the same way they control cookies and popups.

 

We have been successful in exposing it through the Javascript DOM and
wanted to start talking with standards bodies about coming up with a
standard implementation to make location-aware browsing common
functionality at the browser level. I was hoping to kick off a
discussion around possible implementations and get the community's
thoughts on the topic.

 

Location could be exposed through a standard Javascript object/interface

 

var location = window.getLocation();

 

 - 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

 

What are people's thoughts on location in the browser? Is the "window"
object the right object to attach to? Im interested to hear everyone's
thoughts...

 

Best, Ryan

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