Learning PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, CSS & HTML5, 3rd Edition

Chapter 25. Other HTML5 Features

In this final chapter on HTML5 I explain how to use geolocation, local storage, and web workers; show you how to allow web apps to run offline; and demonstrate the use of in-browser dragging and dropping.

Strictly speaking, most of these features (like much of HTML5) aren’t really extensions to HTML, because you access them with JavaScript rather than with HTML markup. They are simply technologies that are being embraced by browser developers, and have been given the handy umbrella name of HTML5.

This means, though, that you need to have fully understood the JavaScript tutorial in this book in order to use them properly. That said, once you get the hang of them, you’ll wonder how you ever did without these powerful new features.

Geolocation and the GPS Service

The GPS (Global Positioning System) service consists of multiple satellites orbiting the earth whose positions are very precisely known. When a GPS-enabled device tunes into them, the different times at which signals from these various satellites arrive enable the device to quite accurately know where it is; because the speed of light (and therefore radio waves) is a known constant, the time it takes a signal to get from a satellite to a GPS device indicates the satellite’s distance.

By noting the different times at which signals arrive from different satellites, which are in precisely known orbital locations at any one time, a simple triangulation calculation gives the device its position relative ...