I'd like to implement a UX that makes selecting an appropriate timezone very
simple. This is for a web application, but could be for any application.
When a user creates a profile, they need to select or verify their current
timezone. Instead of presenting the user with a massive list of 500+ zones
from DateTimeZone.getAvailableIDs(), I want to present them with a few very
likely options, with the most likely timezone already selected. Of course
there will still be a way for them to select "Other" to select from all
available timezones.
Here's how I see it working:
1. Application server is accurately set to UTC and runs ntpdate regularly
2. Web client detects user's current local time and passes it to the server
3. Server attempts to determine timezone in several different ways:
A. Given the current server time in UTC and the user's current time in
some unknown timezone, generate a list of potential timezones
B. Server performs a timezone lookup based on IP address of user (
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2763263/how-to-get-clients-timezone-offset-from-his-ip-address
)
C. If user allows it, server performs an HTML5 geo-location and
determines timezone from lat/long (
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/41504/timezone-lookup-from-latitude-longitude
)
4. Server combines the results of options A, B, and C to generate a short
list of potential timezones the user is within, ordered from most likely to
least likely with most likely selected.
5. User is presented with this short list of timezones, with most probable
selected and an "Other" option to pick from the entire list
In fact, I could see the UI looking something like the following site, but
simplified. The list would be comprised of many of the same timezone
aliases, such as "America/Los_Angeles", "America/Vancouver",
"America/Tijuana", etc. Your current time would be shown along with the
current time in each timezone. Each timezone alias would be selectable, with
the top most selected by default:
http://everytimezone.com/
Obviously, the user's time is likely to be inaccurate -- certainly not the
same as the server's time. And there is the delay between when the time is
taken on the client and sent to the server for processing. So the logic
would assume that the time sent from the client could be off by minutes. The
closer their time is to accurate, the more precise the suggested timezones
would be. I'm not worried about those users who's clock is completely wrong.
Just thought I'd ask for suggestions or comments before beginning
implementation. Sorry if this is slightly off-topic, but it does pertain to
some specific Joda questions:
1. Are there any features of JodaTime that would significantly simplify or
help with step 3A above?
2. Is there a way to get a list of timezone "groups" from Joda (such as
"Africa", "America", "US", "Etc", and so forth)? This would allow timezones
from "America" to be preferred over "US", as the US zones would not be given
as options.
3. Any suggestions on how to best integrate timezone "preference"
information? For instance, as of today, it is better for a user to pick
"America/Los_Angeles" than it is to pick "US/Pacific", "PST8PDT",
"UTC-08:00", or "GMT+08:00". I'd like to only show the "preferred"
timezones.
4. Any suggestions on how to best integrate timezone "usage" or "population"
information? For instance, if it is 12:00 noon local time and the server
says it is 20:00, then options for UTC--8:00 should be shown. But I'd like
to show "America/Los_Angeles" before "Pacific/Pitcairn".
5. Are there any serious flaws I haven't considered in this approach?
Thanks,
Tauren
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