Daylight Saving Time (DST) within one country

[3247]

Option 1 does not seem very viable, for reasons you already posted, it would be a lot of work to gather and use all that information, and it might make choosing a timezone difficult for the end-user.

Well, the information is available (in a strange format that has to be converted) and IMO it is easier to select a city than to select a GMT offset.

The problem with option 3 and 4 is that it would confuse a lot of people, thinking they are viewing things in their own time, OR if they know it's in a different time, sometimes its difficult for a lot of people to make the conversion in their head.

Well, you would have to show the time zone to people. (e.g. "13:37:23 +02:00", which means "13:37" in time zone "GMT+02:00"). Probably not good as a default setting, however.

How about option 5:
an option on registration to allow users to select: "Detect Daylight Savings time", which many boards have... I believe PCP for phpBB2 had it.
although, the problem with that is now the US has changed the month when Daylight Savings time begins and/or ends. So it would not be all constant per date.
However, if the "Detect" really "detects" the local time to see if it is DST, then this option would still be the best.

That's essentially option 4 done wrong.

Well, a mod for option 4 is easy to write. A mod for option 1 is harder but I think it's quite possible.

[SamG]

IMO it is easier to select a city than to select a GMT offset.

I don't recall exactly when it changed, but at some point early in phpBB 2's life, it had the city (offset) format, and that created enough useability issues that the current system was implemented (basically, the city names were dropped). People are more likely to know their timezone than the nearest major city in their timezone, evidently.

Palm OS does it by city, Windows by timezone, and the latter would seem to be the more "user friendly" approach, if past phpBB experience is still valid.

[3247]

Windows uses time zone names like "(+01:00) Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna".

Of course, it is a usability problem if you don't implement automatic DST switching (or a "DST on/off" switch such as Olympus's) and users living in Berlin are supposed to switch to "(+02:00) Athens, Beirut, Istanbul, Minsk" during DST...

[SamG]

Not for the U.S. (North America?). Windows uses the standard timezones, e.g., (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada) -- unlike Palm OS, where as a Michigan resident I select New York City. Outside the U.S. (North America) Windows shows time zones as you described. So you can see why the issue, even before we get to DST. But then, as you said, DST aggravates the problem.