HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
The API is incredibly simple to work with, and you can easily
enhance your web apps if they make use of any geo data by
plugging this API into the app and saving users from having to
finger or scroll all over your map to find themselves.
Currently, Internet Explorer 9 and at least the latest and previous
versions of all other browsers have support for the geolocation
API—not a bad state to be in for a bleeding edge technology. In
addition, many smart phones and their mobile browsers support
the geolocation API, including iOS, Andriod's WebKit, Firefox
Mobile, and Opera Mobile. In addition, if you're using Open Web
technologies to build native mobile applications, PhoneGap, the
framework for deploying Open Web mobile apps, provides the
geolocation API as well.
The geolocation API gives us a way to locate the user's exact
position. There are already lots of applications that make use
of this API, ranging from mapping, as seen on Google Maps in
Figure 9.1
, to location-based social networks such as Gowalla
and Google Buzz.
FIguRE 9.1
Google Maps
detects geolocation support
and adds the “locate me”
functionality.
