Kornel Lesinski wrote:
For some applications location given in format other than lat/long may
be more useful and less privacy-sensitive.
The privacy-sensitivity problem can be easily dealt with by reducing the
accuracy of the lat/long given.
For example name of the city might be good enough if you order a cab
from a nationwide company.
Postcode would be easiest way to integrate location API with existing
services (especially via userjs/greasemonkey, where using
location->postcode database may be difficult).
The problem with suggestions like this is that they require geocoding on
the server side. Geocoding services are not always readily available;
there's no free, unencumbered implementation I know of. And you need a
different database for every country.
I guess I don't object to the browser returning this information
additionally if it knows it - but lat/long should be the baseline,
always-present info.
My proposal is:
use navigator.getGeolocation instead of window.getLocation to avoid
conflicts with existing functions (window object is a global namespace
in JS) and to avoid confusion with window.location object.
I think this is a good idea.
navigator.getGeolocation() would return location with best precision
allowed by default (without asking user every time). If user set in
preferences that every page can get location with 10km precision, that
would be returned.
I think it's better to ask every time and remember the precision
allowed. I would certainly much prefer to know who knows where I am.
Gerv
