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That's useful, thanks.

There's a Javascript method to retrieve the timezone of the user's PC: http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/jsref_gettimezoneoffset.asp

I've never tried it, but it might be easy to add the HTML5 geolocation thing as a default: http://html5demos.com/geo .

I'm not sure if there's an easy way to get the timezone for a lat+long though. Some ideas here. I've heard of geonames.org (related to my job), but never used it.

http://html5demos.com/offlineapp

Firefox has had HTML5 File API support for a while now (it works in my FF 3.6). Try it out at http://html5demos.com/file-api. It works for me in Chrome and FF (not sure about safari).
 
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What the update means is that they've relaxed the application vetting so apps that use the geolocation API aren't scrutinised as much as they used to be. Apple are telling users that apps can, and will, collect and store your location data, and that they're not going to stop them even if there's no reason for the app to be doing it. The app will still ask you if you want to share your location as it always has done.

Who tells you that might be happening if you have an Android phone? Or if you install a browser that enables the geolocation services of HTML 5 on your PC (eg http://html5demos.com/geo )? No one. They don't have to. They can't really, because there isn't a "gatekeeper" controlling it all.

Actually that's complete horsesh!t and if you knew anything about the android platform you'd already know it.

When you install an app from the android market it notifies you of services that it will need to use, based on the permissions the app is requesting. Geolocation data IS one of these permissions.

"Who tells you that might be happening if you have an Android phone? Or if you install a browser that enables the geolocation services of HTML 5 on your PC (eg http://html5demos.com/geo )? No one. They don't have to."

Wrong. Each time you install an Android app, before accepting installation you've given a run down of what permissions the app requires, this includes things like internet access, or making phone calls, but also includes things like judging your rough location using cell masts etc., or judging your fine grained location using GPS. Regarding Google services doing geolocation, that's an option you'll get first time you turn your phone on and can easily change in the menus later if you choose if it has the Google apps pre-installed. I'm not sure why you think they can't stop it on Android, because Android has a marketplace too and all but the most technical users who know the risks anyway use this path for installing apps.

As for IP based geolocation on a PC, frankly I could care less. Even if I'm not using a VPN or something the best they can do is judge my location to be in an area large enough to contain a population of 20 million people. Apart from telling my country that's largely useless information, and that's all it's really used for as it's all that it can be used for, certainly it's not really enough to track you as an individual over and above what your IP already allows.

What the update means is that they've relaxed the application vetting so apps that use the geolocation API aren't scrutinised as much as they used to be. Apple are telling users that apps can, and will, collect and store your location data, and that they're not going to stop them even if there's no reason for the app to be doing it. The app will still ask you if you want to share your location as it always has done.

Who tells you that might be happening if you have an Android phone? Or if you install a browser that enables the geolocation services of HTML 5 on your PC (eg http://html5demos.com/geo )? No one. They don't have to. They can't really, because there isn't a "gatekeeper" controlling it all.

I have yet to see *one* single site that requires Firefox

HTML5 elements such as <video> and <canvas> do not work in Internet Explorer. They work in Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, Opera, or the Google Chrome Frame plug-in for IE. Among these, Firefox has the most users. Look at how many of these demos of HTML5 elements and APIs don't work in IE 8.

There's not even a drag and drop mechanism built in that works across all browsers.

Since we're talking HTML5, this demo may be relevant. Since we're talking about HTML5, don't complain about "does not work across all browsers". IE6 and Firefox 2.0 surely don't support HTML5. How did I conclude you're also talking about HTML5? Because you mentioned local storage.

Otherwise, yes, there are numerous problems with web as a platform. They all, however, stem from everyone doing things their own way. You may devise a way to battle with HTML problems in different way than I will. If suddenly browser makers decided that my way is correct, you'd go nuts.

The right way to go for web apps would be to ditch HTML and DOM as such, and even some standard JS functions such as setInterval() (which goes against OOP so horribly that it's undescribable). Browsers should have two modes: web and app, and which could be intermixed via iframes in both modes.

Getting everyone to agree to some standard set of features, however, doesn't seem possible. Is Silverlight (as a concept) and perhaps XPI maybe a step in the right direction? Should something similar, but more app-oriented and not implemented as a plugin be developed? And how is anyone supposed to get Mozilla, Microsoft, Google and Apple to agree to a common way to make such a drastic paradigm shift while retaining quality?