[RFC|Merged] Switch to PHP timezone handling

[igorw]

The popup idea is IMO not very user friendly. A text field for the timezones? I don't think so. I by far prefer the idea of two dropdowns, one for the continent, the other one dynamically loading the options of that continent.

[EXreaction]

How about something like MSFT uses for the timezone selection? They have about 100 entries and cover the full spectrum it looks like.

[igorw]

How about something like MSFT uses for the timezone selection? They have about 100 entries and cover the full spectrum it looks like.

Link/screenshot?

An alternative might be presenting a map and let users click on their town. Powered by JavaScript, Inspired by Ubuntu. FWIW...

[EXreaction]

[Erik Frèrejean]

That said, why not simply converting the current timezone list into data that can be used for timezone handling, what is the advantage of having (for example) 150 timezones in America while in reality there are only 7 timezones used. If its all about "it looks fancy" I'd vote against this, even using two dropdowns and dynamically change the second on the continent selected this is IMHO usability--.
Maybe there is some major advantage of having that much choice but I really don't see it, I only see a lot of pain. When selecting a timezone I only want to say that I'm UTC+1, not: I'm in Europe -> I'm in western Europe -> I'm in the Netherlands -> I'm in Amsterdam (what I'm not but its the only "php tz" here)

[ToonArmy]

That said, why not simply converting the current timezone list into data that can be used for timezone handling, what is the advantage of having (for example) 150 timezones in America while in reality there are only 7 timezones used. If its all about "it looks fancy" I'd vote against this, even using two dropdowns and dynamically change the second on the continent selected this is IMHO usability--.
Maybe there is some major advantage of having that much choice but I really don't see it, I only see a lot of pain. When selecting a timezone I only want to say that I'm UTC+1, not: I'm in Europe -> I'm in western Europe -> I'm in the Netherlands -> I'm in Amsterdam (what I'm not but its the only "php tz" here)

Well the EU solved all the DST issues in Europe, but in US afaik it has been known to vary down to the city level I'm not sure about that currently.

[Erik Frèrejean]

AFAIK, http://www.timetemperature.com/tzus/tim ... ries.shtml

[naderman]

That is only timezones, what this is supposed to solve is daylight saving time. And how that is handled varies a lot. It is a lot more userfriendly to have a user select what city they live in, then to manually select when they have DST and when not.

[DavidIQ]

Since Msft was brought up, would it be possible to just synchronize to a server to update a user's DST settings like they do on Windows?

[A_Jelly_Doughnut]

Since Msft was brought up, would it be possible to just synchronize to a server to update a user's DST settings like they do on Windows?

Well, that's not how Windows works, for starters. Windows will properly handle the DST switch regardless of network connection being present. Windows has a database to check against. Windows does have a very good solution: Sorted by UTC offset and including some notable cities (grouped by country). The United States all moves from standard time to summer time at the same time, so someone in Bangor, Maine can safely choose the "New York City" zone.

Chris is right, the daylight saving time in the USA can vary by city. Unfortunately, the PHP time zone database includes quite a number of time "zones" which either duplicate others or simply do not exist any more (America/Indiana/Knox is an example, and I would guess that Europe has others)

Entering cities would work if everyone already knew what city to enter. I'd write "Chicago" (correctly), but I imagine my neighbor would write "St. Louis" (which is not among the choices in the DB) or "Louisville" which is in another time zone altogether, and similarly is not in the DB.

I would implement it with the 400-long alphabetical list of the timezones, at least for now. Improvements are surely possible, but require considerable amounts of work.