Since early beta release of Firefox 3.1 there is experimental support for the experimental W3C Geolocation API.

Now Doug Turner, one of the engineers who is behind the Geolocation support in Firefox, wrote a nice background story geolocation in Firefox 3.5 (hacks.mozilla.org). A very interesting read, and it turns out that geolocation is not only for mobile devices, but also available in regular Firefox versions, using wifi or IP address mapping.

Using Firefox 3.5 or another location aware browser? Give it a try by clicking the button below, a map with your current location will be loaded…

Note:

• Firefox 3.5b4 has an annoying bug (#490046) which lets you get your location only once per run.
• Privacy is an issue, Firefox asks for permission by showing a notification bar on top of the screen. Click “Tell them” to proceed…

  

What the script does…

// call native geolocation API:
navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(callback);

// callback initializes a google map with the geo data:
function callback(position) {
    ...
    var point = new GLatLng(position.coords.latitude,
         position.coords.longitude);
    ...
}

Google provides a similar Geolocation API implementation through Gears.

Got another browser where the API works? Please leave a comment!

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• Google Location Services now in Mozilla Firefox (google-code-updates.blogspot.com)
• W3C Geolocation API – Making Websites Location-aware (slideshare.net)
• New Geo For Devs From Google I/O (radar.oreilly.com)
• Opera, Now With Geolocation (mashable.com)
• Firefox 3.5 Gets Geolocation, Powered by Google (lifehacker.com)
• Google and Mozilla team up to pinpoint your location (venturebeat.com)
• Location awareness spreads to Opera browser (arstechnica.com)

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