Hacker News Reader

Comment by mkl | Hacker News Reader

This might be easier than refusing permission every time - it sounds like I can just not click it. I really dislike location permission things. I don't know what location will be shared, I don't use anything that needs a precise location, and I don't ever want to share my actual location. If location permission things showed me a map with where they think I am and let me click a (vague) location to share, I might use them, but currently to find nearest stores or whatever I just type in a postcode or use their map.

Edit: this has prompted me to go find a way to turn off location permission requests in the browser settings. It turns out you can do it under Privacy and Security > Site Settings in Firefox and Chrome.

View on HN

This element has an autolocate attribute that will request permission automatically, plus it doesn't supersede the JS api, it simply provides a declarative alternative to it, so sites that follow this negative pattern will keep doing so.

At the same time, there is no reason to not implement this pattern today and require user intent prior to requesting the permission

According to the post, autolocate only does something after a user initiated permission has been granted.

So on the first vist you still need to click the button. On the second visit the callback will be triggered directly.

But, well, nothing prevents a big fat html modal on the page pointing to the button, now does it? If you want to annoy your product^H^H^H^H^H^H^Husers then you can always find ways to do so.

> easier than refusing permission every time

Most browsers allow setting default permissions for all sites at once.

Not default permissions, it turns out, but you have a global choice between letting sites ask for permission or blocking the requests entirely.

Safari lets you differentiate. I can set all sites to deny by default, configure Home Depot to always ask for permission (resets every 24 hours), and configure still others to always allow.

Me too. I don't share precise location but will happily click on a map if a website gives me the option. For things that i really need, i just use dev tools to manually set the location :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com