The Mozilla Hacks blog has posted a nice screencast overview of the HTML5 Geolocation API. The video is designed to help anyone competing in Mozilla’s September developer derby (which involves building something with the Geolocation API), but it also makes a great overview for anyone wanting to get started with Geolocation.
The HTML5 Geolocation API enables web developers to discover a user’s location via the browser (with the user’s permission of course). There’s no need to install any apps or do anything else at all, provided your user has a modern web browser. Despite pretty good browser support for the HTML5 Geolocation API, geolocation tools have become associated with native mobile apps, not web apps. Mozilla’s September developer derby is hoping to inspire web developers to change that.
For those that don’t have a browser capable of using the Geolocation API there are a number of JavaScript based polyfills developers can use to fill in the gaps in browser support. Check out the Mozilla Hacks blog for some links to the Geolocation polyfills, as well as the sample code shown in the movie below.
