Getting browser location with tmprtr

I very recently created an app called tmprtr. It is a very simple weather app that uses your location to get weather data. I created it using navigator.geolocation which in modern browsers requests the user to allow/deny the website from getting an accurate geolocation. This is great because I get a very accurate location for the user and they get the weather! But I wanted to do better.

Immediately after visiting my site for the first time, a user will be greeted with a “GIVE ME YOUR LOCATION” request and to me that, from a user experience, raises a big red flag. I wanted a way to get the location using the most unintrusive way and considering I don’t need exact location, I decided to attempt to get location based on IP address first. This location is less accurate than the previously mentioned method, but for the purposes of weather, it’s close enough. I request IP location (all under the hood) and if that fails, fallback to a geolocation request, so I always ensure the user has the best experience possible. To get the IP location I embed a javascript library from http://www.geoplugin.net/javascript.gp into my page and request the latitude and longitude values through two requests:

geoplugin_latitude();
geoplugin_longitude();

From here I request the weather data from the server, just as I would had I got the coordinates from the more obtrusive (yet more accurate) request:

navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition();

Overall, switching to a default IP-based location has not affected my app in any negative direction. The user has their weather information nearly instantly after visiting and is less disrupted in the process.