After reading about Firefox’s Geolocation functionality, which doesn’t use GPS, I’m wondering what it would take for a browser (IE and/or Firefox) to be able to access a GPS device connected to a normal laptop/desktop computer?
So far the only technology I’ve found that seems to be able to do this is Google Gears’ Geolocation API or device specific APIs such as this Garmin plugin.
Are there any other/better solutions? Browser plugins/extensions are fine for this purpose.
Update: I don’t mind elevating the security privileges of the browser, using a plugin etc.
Update: “Firefox 3.6 (Gecko 1.9.2) added support for using the GPSD (GPS daemon) service for geolocation on Linux”: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/using_geolocation
Looks like this GPS in Browser tool will let IE actually get GPS coordinates via javascript from a connected GPS.