Here is the long-awaited summary of the floating timezones proposal put forth on the design list Jan 6th.
I wrote up a proposal for implementing a variation on how iCal treats timezones in the UI:
+ OOTB, Chandler calendar does not support timezones. No pulldowns to specify or display a timezone for the calendar canvas. No pulldowns to specify or display timezones for individual events.
+ Users interested in timezone support can look for it in Preferences and activate it explicitly.
This split off into 3 separate threads:
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1. Should we store events as floating when timezone support has not been activated?
Some use cases for doing this:
+ Users who don't really travel much or don't use their calendar when traveling.
++ They only use calendars for work and they mostly travel for vacation or family holidays.
+ Users who do travel but prefer to do all the timezone math in their head.
++ Described David Allen's way of sorting out timezones in his calendar.
++ People get used to identifying certain meetings by their start time or approximate placement physically on the calendar canvas, ie. "that 1:30" meeting, irrespective of what timezone they're in. So keeping the "1:30" meeting in the 1:30 slot is important, even if the user changes the "clock" on their computer to a new timezone.
However, Grant pointed out that in iCal, they actually store the events in the "local" timezone even though the UI pretends to not know anything about timezones. As a result, in iCal if you change your "clock" on your computer to a new timezone, all of the events on your calendar will get moved automatically. If you go from San Francisco to New York, events that started at 1:30PM will show up as starting at 4:30PM.
There are also some complications if you pretend that timezones don't exist:
+ What happens when you receive an invitation for an event that is stored in a specific timezone?
+ What happens when you subscribe to a calendar that is stored in a specific timezone(s)
Some possible solutions:
+ Throw up a dialog to let people turn on timezones support AND/OR
+ The new events show up on your calendar as floating, but the specific timezone they're stored in is displayed, but not editable. So if you have NOT turned on timezone support and receive an event for 1-2PM EST, it will show up in the 1-2PM slot on the calendar and the detail view will display: 1-2PM EST.
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2. Should we have preferences at all?
Jeffrey wasn't sure whether we wanted to hide timezones by default.
Philippe pointed out that users looking for timezone support will be motivated to look for it in preferences.
Brendan thought most student users of calendars wouldn't need timezone support but wasn't sure if that was a valid user group.
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Mimi
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