[RFC|Merged] Switch to PHP timezone handling

[Dicky]

besides that: Why do you use GMT and not UTC?

Why do we even use either one of them? I thought the idea of switching to PHP timezone handling was so the user wouldn't have to worry about timezone offsets and whether DST is set. The user only has to select a location within their timezone and PHP will calculate the timezone setting and DST offset.

I have put together a nearly complete list of world timezone locations. You can see them at http://www.richardfoote.com/phpBB3/ucp. ... e=register

[Sierron]

besides that: Why do you use GMT and not UTC?

Why do we even use either one of them? I thought the idea of switching to PHP timezone handling was so the user wouldn't have to worry about timezone offsets and whether DST is set. The user only has to select a location within their timezone and PHP will calculate the timezone setting and DST offset.

I have put together a nearly complete list of world timezone locations. You can see them at http://www.richardfoote.com/phpBB3/ucp. ... e=register

Yeah, but the auto-detect is bad. I have "United States/New York Eastern Time" auto selected :/

[naderman]

besides that: Why do you use GMT and not UTC?

Why do we even use either one of them? I thought the idea of switching to PHP timezone handling was so the user wouldn't have to worry about timezone offsets and whether DST is set. The user only has to select a location within their timezone and PHP will calculate the timezone setting and DST offset.

It is only displayed to help locate the right location in the drop down more easily.

I have put together a nearly complete list of world timezone locations. You can see them at http://www.richardfoote.com/phpBB3/ucp. ... e=register

What happened to the rest? Did you select them manually?

[Dicky]

I have put together a nearly complete list of world timezone locations. You can see them at http://www.richardfoote.com/phpBB3/ucp. ... e=register

What happened to the rest? Did you select them manually?

I had "borrowed" the list from another board software that uses PHP timezone handling. I have now updated the list using the Olson database which gives 410 timezone regions. The list could use some improvements with better descriptions and grouping of regions.

Yeah, but the auto-detect is bad. I have "United States/New York Eastern Time" auto selected :/

I didn't do the auto-detect due to time restrictions and due to the fact that auto-detect detects only the timezone offset and not the timezone region. The timezone regions do have a latitude/longitude listing so it may be possible to determine a user's timezone region from the user's location.

besides that: Why do you use GMT and not UTC?

Why do we even use either one of them? I thought the idea of switching to PHP timezone handling was so the user wouldn't have to worry about timezone offsets and whether DST is set. The user only has to select a location within their timezone and PHP will calculate the timezone setting and DST offset.

It is only displayed to help locate the right location in the drop down more easily.

Another way to help find the right location is to put the location's current time in the description, although that may be too much overhead.

[Oleg]

The reason I went with my proposal is to guarantee sensible worst case behavior. User finds their current time offset in the list and has to look through at most a couple of pages of timezones. Dicky's proposal does not put close timezones together and some of the names are not consistent - for example "United States" and "US Virgin Islands".

I am open to the idea of shortening the list by removing uncommon timezones.

However, at this point I'm quite happy with the UI and I won't be changing it any more until the remaining functionality is implemented - the update code needs to be finished and I think there are still bits around the codebase using the old approach.

If Chris picks this back up before I finish it it would of course be up to him as to what to work on.

On earlier comments:

UTC vs GMT - I did not think about this too hard, I'll use UTC if that's what should be there.

Default selection - I thought it would be better to indicate the current offset, and I'm thinking I just need to include explanatory text saying the offset is current with DST if any applies. Maybe this can be done differently, again I would come back to this after functionality is finished.

[Sierron]

UTC vs GMT - I did not think about this too hard, I'll use UTC if that's what should be there.

Well from the time there is no difference. UTC is the right word. GMT is like other timezone shortcuts, e. g. EST or PST or whatever is used in the different countries.

[naderman]

Default selection - I thought it would be better to indicate the current offset, and I'm thinking I just need to include explanatory text saying the offset is current with DST if any applies. Maybe this can be done differently, again I would come back to this after functionality is finished.

Well the way it currently shows is plain wrong, but of course nothing wrong with fixing this later

[teikjoon]

Hello all,

Rather than having users navigate the entire list of all possible time zones, why not simply ask them what time it is where they are, and using their local time, figure out (or at least greatly cut down) which time zone they are in?

For example :

a) Its 8:40pm for me.
b) The server powering this forum is in timezone GMT -7 hours (Eugene, California?)
c) <math>
d) Therefore the user (me) is in timezone UTC +10 hours, which could mean Australia (AEST), Guam, Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, Russia.

[AmigoJack]

greatly cut down) which time zone they are in

Like a filter? Sounds good to me. The default value for that could be done with JS also, so most of the times users don't even have to enter a value at all. But they still have to submit it to actually reduce the selection.

[nickvergessen]

But they still have to submit it to actually reduce the selection.

Well we could make use of ajax here