Geolocation provider for Firefox that allows manual input

Question

Are there any easy ways to override the default behaviors of the geolocation api and just hard code your current location?

I think this would be useful for testing and for privacy reasons (providing fake location data)

I thought there was an add on for this but I can't seem to find one. Only option right now seems to be changing the about:config geo.wifi.url to some alternative webservice, which I consider overly complicated.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Ideal Scenario

Somebody implements an add-on where a google map appears and I can pick a new default location.

Answer 1

The easiest way is to navigate to about:config and then in the filter box enter geo.wifi.uri, double-click the only config row that shows up, and enter the value below after you replace xxx and yyy with the co-ordinates you get from a service like http://www.getlatlon.com/:

data:application/json,{"location":{"latitude":xxx,"longitude":yyy,"accuracy":10}}

This trick doesn't require any add-ons or local/hosted files. Make sure the value is without any spaces and is on a single line!

Answer 2

The geo.wifi.uri does not need to be a webservice. You can also set it to a local uri with file://...

The file should be a json file with content like this:

{"location": {
              "latitude": 48.777025000000002, 
              "longitude": 9.1713909999999998, 
              "accuracy": 10.0}}

Update: For Firefox 9+, the format has changed:

{
    "status": "OK",
    "accuracy": 10.0,
    "location": {"lat": 48.777, "lng": 9.171}
}

Or you can combine them to support both:

{
    "status": "OK",
    "accuracy": 10.0,
    "location": {
        "lat": 48.777,
        "lng": 9.171,
        "latitude": 48.777,
        "longitude": 9.171,
        "accuracy": 10.0
    }
}

Update: it looks like manually setting this preference is blocked by the provider assuming the Google service. See Bug 716453 Update 2: geo.wifi.uri not geo.wifi.url