[whatwg] input type="location" proposals

[Tab Atkins Jr.]

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 10:29 AM, Diogo Resende
<dresende at thinkdigital.pt> wrote:
> On Tue, 2010-08-10 at 10:00 -0700, Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
>> Does a type=location offer any similar benefits over a pair of
>> type=number inputs?
>
> Yes, of course. Instead of a numeric keyboard (I never saw one on my
> iphone), I could just point my current location, or select a location
> nearby using a map or so.
>
> Don't forget about other devices; phones are great but there are bigger
> screens, like tablets that don't require a special keyboard for input. I
> think a better validation and a way of context-aware to the browsers
> would be good.

I do like the idea of being able to automatically input your current
location (geolocation without having to touch javascript!).

The ability to provide a map seems slightly more limited, but I can
see it being useful.  Frex, on Android phones it could default to a
google maps source, perhaps with the option for a user to swap to a
different map provider.  (Someone had previously mentioned specifying
a map source in CSS, but that seems like the wrong layer for this sort
of thing - the user should be the one choosing what map source to
use.)

~TJ