Location based mobile web sites

[stan wiechers-3]

hey there

i created a javascript library that retrieves the users geographic
location on a mobile web site. the library wraps the underlying
implementations with a simple interface. currently it works on iphone
os3, android os via google gears ,some windows mobile via google gears
and some blackberries. if you know of other platforms that support
javascript and geographic locations that please let me know and we
will try to incorporate.

http://code.google.com/p/geo-location-javascript/

thought you might find that interesting,
stan
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[Marc Wick]

Hi Stan

Sounds interesting. Can you tell us how the library compares to or works
with the W3C Geolocation API? Is it a similar goal to have standardized
interface?

Best

Marc

stan wiechers wrote:

> hey there
>
> i created a javascript library that retrieves the users geographic
> location on a mobile web site. the library wraps the underlying
> implementations with a simple interface. currently it works on iphone
> os3, android os via google gears ,some windows mobile via google gears
> and some blackberries. if you know of other platforms that support
> javascript and geographic locations that please let me know and we
> will try to incorporate.
>
> http://code.google.com/p/geo-location-javascript/
>
> thought you might find that interesting,
> stan
> >
>

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[stan wiechers-3]

Hi Marc

I had the following scenario in mind, a mobile site that provides some kind of location based service like a restaurant search. With the API the site can determine if the handset has javascript geo capabilities or not, if it has then it can present a dialog to assist the user in finding his location, if not provide a input method to enter his location and use a service like geonames to resolve the input.

For handsets that already support the W3C Geolocation API it is simply routing the call to the right object, that is different between for example between iphone os and android devices, for the iphone OS you simply use the navigator object, for android which uses google gears you have to first initiate the object via a factory.

For handsets that have client side geo capabilites but use propriatary means to retrieve the location it is wrapping the mechanism, this applies in the cases of a blackberry handset or nokia devices that run the Nokia Web Runtime Toolkit or Palm Pre WebOS.

I try to be as compliant to the W3C API as possible, the blackberry library for example doesn't always supply the timestamp when the location was taken same for the Nokia WRT. The timestamp is specified as a mandatory element in the location result. Also the nokia WRT doesn't let you specify that you want a result fast and don't need the exact location, the W3C API specifies that as the enableHighAccuracy hint.

Nokia WRT and WebOS (there are more similar ones in the making) are quite interesting, with those you write full applications using javascript, html and css. But they use very different javascript libraries that give i.e. access to the users location. So you can use one library for regular mobile websites and those application frameworks.

Goal was to simplify the process and to let developers concentrate on the task at hand.

Does this make sense?

Best,
Stan

On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 4:31 PM, Marc Wick <marc@...> wrote:

Hi Stan

Sounds interesting. Can you tell us how the library compares to or works
with the W3C Geolocation API? Is it a similar goal to have standardized
interface?

Best

Marc

stan wiechers wrote:
> hey there
>
> i created a javascript library that retrieves the users geographic
> location on a mobile web site. the library wraps the underlying
> implementations with a simple interface. currently it works on iphone
> os3, android os via google gears ,some windows mobile via google gears
> and some blackberries. if you know of other platforms that support
> javascript and geographic locations that please let me know and we
> will try to incorporate.
>
> http://code.google.com/p/geo-location-javascript/
>
> thought you might find that interesting,
> stan
> >
>

--
"Local color. Soak it up"
Virginia Vidaura

http://www.merkwelt.com/people/stan/

please overlook typos

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