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Mozilla Adds Location to Firefox
The Mozilla Corporation in the US, best known as the producers of the popular Firefox open source browser, has released a product called Geode as an experimental add-on to explore geolocation in Firefox 3.0. Geoode will be included in the forthcoming beta release of Firefox 3.1, scheduled for early next year.
Geode is Mozilla's version of a new W3C Geolocation Specification, which adds the native ability for websites to request a location from a browser. The power of this is that any mobile device capable of running Firefox 3.1, such as 3G mobile phones and most other mobile devices, will be able to report its location directly to a server.
W3C is a consortium of companies dedicated to the creation of standards for web devices.
Its Geolocation API has been created by the W3C Geolocation Working Group. The API defines a high-level interface to location information on the hosting device, such as latitude and longitude.
The API itself is agnostic with respect to the source of the location information, but certainly includes such common location sources as GNSS or locations inferred from network signals such as IP address, RFID, WiFi and Bluetooth MAC addresses, as well as GSM cell IDs.
The API is designed to enable one-shot position requests, repeated position updates, or last-known position. Location information is represented by latitude and longitude co-ordinates. There is also the option to reverse geocode address information.
Information available on the W3C website emphasises that the work on the API is still experimental. The Working Group is currently developing one or more documents that recommend interfaces for making the information accessible by the user.
However, any recommendation will be consistent with the principles that: the interface should be usable regardless of the source of location information; it will be consistent across location technologies; and it will be specified in a language-independent manner.
Requirements for security and privacy protection will be included.
In addition, the Working Group may explore exposing location information via markup or sending it via HTTP headers.
Mozilla says the potential of the new facility is interesting. Consider, for example, an RSS reader that knows the difference between your home and work locations and automatically changes its behaviour accordingly, or web site authentication that only allows you to login from certain physical locations, like your home or office. One could also, for instance, build a news site whose local section is actually tailored to the locality of the reader.
