How to use HTML5 geolocation

The new geolocation function in HTML5 adds the functionality to the browser necessary to detect the user’s location, generate co-ordinates, and return them as values back to the user.

Not only will it work across desktops, but across mobile and tablet devices too — which opens up huge possibilities for web developers looking to create location-based online apps!

In today’s tutorial, you’ll learn how to fetch the latitude and longitude co-ordinates using nothing more than a few lines of HTML and JavaScript. You’ll then learn how to take those co-ordinates and feed them into the Google Maps API to reverse-geocode those values and produce a live in-browser map of your current location, complete with a place marker.

Once you’ve finished the tutorial, I recommend checking out the full Google Maps API documentation to learn about some of the more extensive and exciting features it’s capable of.

Have you used a location service for a project? How reliable do you think geolocation is? Let us know in the comments.

Featured image/thumbnail, location image via Shutterstock.

WDD Staff

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