Visualising the geolocation API

Hey,

I think the list might also find one of our other recent projects 
interesting too and I'd really like to get your thoughts and feedback.

We've recently released a Kickstarter project around our "Augmenting the 
Web" R&D (shameless plug - please back us here http://kck.st/1gnUJex). 
As part of that we've been working on all the key APIs and what we need 
to do to help convince users that the Augmented Web Platform really is 
as good as, if not better than native apps.

One of the things we've found is that a lot of users still don't realise 
that browsers can track their location and even fewer can visualise how 
that works or how accurate it is. So we've created this demo that helps 
them do exactly that.

https://buildAR.com/trackme

We've found the easiest way to get people's attention is by starting 
with the privacy discussion, but once they start exploring this it opens 
up their mind to how this can really be useful too. People we've 
explored this with seem very aware that mobile apps can track them and 
also that the web can easily show local information. But many don't seem 
to make the connection with web based tracking and more accurate data 
like that required for AR.

In this demo we use a mixture of getPosition() and watchPosition() and 
visualise lat, lon and accuracy. We haven't really used heading or 
speed, etc...yet.

However, we have noticed a few small issues through all of our testing 
and evaluation with users. You can clearly see that the different 
devices have very different warm up processes after the watchPosition() 
is setup. But more interestingly, the behaviour across different 
browsers on the same device is also quite different. Especially around 
initial response and frequency.

We've also noticed some peculiarities around the corner cases when 
permission is denied.

As discussed earlier on this list this process is really very different 
for each different browser. I really like the Chrome feature on Android 
that lets you find the specific websites you've given permissions to and 
re-allow/deny this. But this is really hidden inside Settings -> Content 
Settings -> Website settings which is cryptically sitting just below 
Location Settings in the menu 8) Does anyone know if there's a quick way 
to access this directly from the page level?

When Location permissions are turned off globally at the Android OS 
Location Settings level then all the browsers seem to act accordingly. 
But both Firefox and Opera then throw the permission prompt again and if 
you allow this they seem to provide location data while leaving the OS 
level Location Settings off. This seems very confusing 8/

We've also noticed that some browsers both on the PC and Android throw 
empty error objects. So all you get is {} with no {code:?} value or 
anything else. Is this a bug we should bother tracking down?

On iOS Safari there doesn't seem to be any way to control permissions at 
the site level - only the global settings for Safari in the OS Location 
Settings. iOS also suffers from the constraints of web browsers not 
being able to run in the background too.

Other than that the overall accuracy of devices and browsers seems to be 
significantly better than similar testing we did just over a year ago. 
So, just like DeviceOrientation it seems like this API is definitely 
ready for primetime and we're really happy using it in our Augmented Web 
applications 8)

I'll look forward to hearing any feedback you have.

roBman

Received on Monday, 24 March 2014 09:50:11 UTC