Re: Letting users select timezone

Edmund von der Burg wrote:
> 2009/1/20 Lyle <[email protected]>:
>> Is there something similar to the time zone selection you get in Windows or
>> similar programs? The GMT, GMT+1, etc...
> You really don't want to do that.
> Many users don't really understand timezones, but almost all know
> where they are. As an example - say you are in the UK and it is mid
> April - should you choose GMT or GMT+1? Has BST kicked in yet? And
> will you remember to log in again and change your settings when BST
> ends, whenever that is. Choose 'Europe/London' and all the magic
> happens for you.

More importantly, while at the moment both London and Accra are on GMT, 
the Ghanaians, being a sensible nation, don't do that stupid timezone 
changing thing twice a year, so Accra *stays* on GMT throughout the 
year, whereas London changes to BST for a bit.  Or consider southern 
Africa and northern Europe - same longitude so you'd think they were the 
same timezone - but Windhoek (in Namibia) and Stockholm (in Sweden) move 
in different directions when they begin and end "daylight saving" time, 
so they could differ by between 0 and 2 hours depending on how the 
timezone changes overlap.

 From a practical point of view, you probably want users to select first 
from a list of areas (eg Europe, or Africa) and then a city within that 
area, to avoid having a very long list.  Even sorted alphabetically, a 
long list can be a pain from an accessibility point of view.

-- 
David Cantrell