HTML 5 Geo Location Prompt in Chrome

Question

Just starting to get into HTML 5 and an testing out geo location...liking it so far. I am hitting a bit of a speed bump though...when I try to get my geo location, chrome automatically blocks the page from getting my location. This does not happen at other sites such as the site below:

http://html5demos.com/geo

The scripts I'm using:

<script type="text/javascript" JavaScript" SRC="geo.js"></script>   
<script type="text/javascript" JavaScript" SRC="Utility.js"></script> 
<script type="text/javascript" JavaScript" SRC="jquery.js"></script> 
<script type="text/javascript" JavaScript" SRC="modernizr.js"></script>  

function get_location() {

        if (geo_position_js.init()) {
            geo_position_js.getCurrentPosition(show_map, handle_error);
        }

    }
    function show_map(position) {
        var latitude = position.coords.latitude;
        var longitude = position.coords.longitude;

        alert("lat:" + latitude + " long:" + longitude);


    }
    function handle_error(err) {
        alert(err.code);
        if (err.code == 1) {
            // user said no!
        }
    }

    if (navigator.geolocation) {
        navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(show_map, handle_error);
    } else {
        error('not supported');
    }

I am testing this out from a local directory on my machine, so there isn't really a "domain" like "http://whatever.com/mytestpage.html". Is this why I am not getting prompted? If so, is it possible to force the browswer to request permission to get the user's geo location and is it possible in my scenario?

Answer 1

I too had this problem when i was trying out Gelocation API. I then started IIS express through visual studio and then accessed the page and It worked without any issue in all browsers.

Answer 2

As already mentioned in the answer by robertc, Chrome blocks certain functionality, like the geo location with local files. An easier alternative to setting up an own web server would be to just start Chrome with the parameter --allow-file-access-from-files. Then you can use the geo location, provided you didn't turn it off in your settings.