[whatwg] Geolocation API Proposal

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Mar 19, 2008, at 8:44 PM, Benjamin West wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 1:03 AM, Aaron Boodman <aa at google.com> wrote:
>> I've posted this to the W3C WebAPI mailing list as well. Still  
>> looking
>> forward to feedback on the actual content of the proposal, in either
>> place.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> - a
>>
>
> 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.

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.

  - Maciej