[whatwg] Geolocation API Proposal

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

On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 8:16 AM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs at apple.com> wrote:
>  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.

not to mention privacy concerns. automatically sending out the user's
coordinates just because their device supports gps isn't a good idea.

and do you send it to third party servers? should doubleclick be able
to automatically target their ads based on precise location?

Received on Friday, 21 March 2008 07:14:39 UTC