MeFi Timezone Support

December 19, 2002 12:56 PM

MetaFilter's front page now supports the display of posts by proper time zone. Set your offset on the customize page, then go to the front page (with the default date sort only at this time) to see the site customized for your part of the world. I'll be adding support for the comments and archives later today. MetaTalk, I'll eventually get to.
posted by mathowie to feature requests at 12:56 PM (31 comments total)

Works for me. Neato.
posted by Stan Chin at 12:59 PM on December 19, 2002

Now it will be easier to figure out that either Miguel never sleeps, or he has a poor soul shackled to a 386 in his basement fulfilling his daily allotment.
posted by machaus at 1:03 PM on December 19, 2002

I'm currently trying to get all the timezone abbreviations right. Man, they're a clusterfuck.
posted by mathowie at 1:13 PM on December 19, 2002

Excellent Matt, while the time does display right, the time zone doesn't. for example:

[22430] posted by gottabefunky at 12:13 PM EST - 20 comments
posted by riffola at 1:18 PM on December 19, 2002

Oops I copied that from gawker, it shows up as 12:13 PM PST on MeFi proper
posted by riffola at 1:20 PM on December 19, 2002

Nope, doesn't work at all for me. Mozilla 1.2/Xp Pro and IE6/XP Pro. I see all the times in PST (Pacific Standard Time?) and the date is still yesterday.
posted by dg at 2:06 PM on December 19, 2002

As I was saying before, I was still working on timezone abbreviations. They should work now.

If you don't see one, or see the wrong one for your area, bring it up. Currently I have the following, going from Australia westward to the edge of alaska (ignore the standard/daylight designation because I'm not going to program that extra logic. Oh, and it's obviously US-centric):

AEST - aussie eastern
ACST - aussie central
JST - japan
ACST - the freaky 30 minute off one for folks in adelaide
AWST - aussie west
IST - india
MSK - moscow
EET - eastern europe
CET - central europe
GMT - should I use UTC here instead?
AT - azores (like anyone actually needs this)
NST - newfoundland time
AST - atlantic
EST - eastern
CST - central
MST - mountain
PST - pacific
AKST - alaska
HST - hawaii
posted by mathowie at 2:19 PM on December 19, 2002

Why use abbreviations when UTC +/- # works just fine? Otherwise, looks good.

You may want to prompt people to update their profile with their timezone (as the default appears to be PST/-8 UTC)... which may be riff's having problems.
posted by silusGROK at 2:27 PM on December 19, 2002

*dg slaps himself for being impatient*

Sorry mathowie - didn't realise that what you were working on would stop it from working. The date/time on threads works now and I guess the date and time on the masthead will catch up when you get to it.

Thanks for this improvement, saves my poor brain some work :-)
posted by dg at 2:53 PM on December 19, 2002

Awesome! Thanks, Matt!
posted by biscotti at 3:08 PM on December 19, 2002

Hey, don't knock the Azores, Matt! And please keep Greenwich Mean Time GMT, the first and coolest timezone in the world, peculiar to London and, of course, Lisbon.

Thanks a lot - we're spoilt, is what we are.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:42 PM on December 19, 2002

Everything's copacetic.
posted by riffola at 3:47 PM on December 19, 2002

I got the header stuff to work right as well.
posted by mathowie at 4:09 PM on December 19, 2002

Yeah, please keep GMT - Greenwich rules
posted by Orange Goblin at 4:12 PM on December 19, 2002

I got the comment pages working with the new timezones, and had to do some re-engineering to get the timezone stuff working exactly for people off by 30 minutes (I was shifting by hours, which only takes integer values).

GMT will stay, I wasn't sure if UTC replaced it in common practice, but it sounds like it hasn't.

I'm just glad I won't feel lost the next time I'm in Reykjavik. Give it up for my peeps in Iceland! Þetta líkar mér!
posted by mathowie at 4:29 PM on December 19, 2002

Matt, in EST there are two Dec 19ths showing up on the front page. Here's a screenie. (The colours are skewed because of Irfanview).
posted by riffola at 4:52 PM on December 19, 2002

riffola, I got it too, in MST.

Maybe the 19th is just a special day.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 4:56 PM on December 19, 2002

I fixed it. There was a bug that was moving the date ahead many days instead of minutes. Should be fine now.
posted by mathowie at 5:28 PM on December 19, 2002

It's not working for me in lofi. Looking at the page in hifi is fine, but then I miss out on really cool abortion threads.
posted by Homeskillet Freshy Fresh at 5:29 PM on December 19, 2002

I'm not going to make it work in lofi. the lofi page is a one-off test page that doesn't get updated with the rest of the site.
posted by mathowie at 5:31 PM on December 19, 2002

Why was this necessary? Isn't everyone who matters already in PST?


Just kidding. Nice work.
posted by rushmc at 6:28 PM on December 19, 2002

Post times in comment pages are accurately given in ET, but still say 'PST' for me.
posted by mattpfeff at 8:14 PM on December 19, 2002

fixed mattpfeff
posted by mathowie at 8:57 PM on December 19, 2002

It has the disappointing disadvantage of revealing what regular hours most of you keep. :)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 12:39 AM on December 20, 2002

[this is totally cool.]
posted by planetkyoto at 4:28 AM on December 20, 2002

Excellent! Well done! Would it be possible to change the time format away from that AM/PM strangeness, too?
posted by cx at 7:32 AM on December 20, 2002

matt: thanks, it works nice!

[joking] cx, why? are you in the army? [/joking]
posted by MzB at 8:37 AM on December 20, 2002

I think I asked for this ages ago, here in fact. So, Fanks again Matt.

BTW I hate to throw a banger on the barbie, but what happens when we get to BST hours ? Or should I just put a sock in it until next May/whenever the clocks change again?
posted by ajbattrick at 2:18 PM on December 20, 2002

Can you make a MetaFilter Timezone? [i know the server is in NYC - EST but set in PST {you were saying clusterfuck matt?}] ;-> or whatever emoticon you like best!
posted by plemeljr at 1:39 PM on December 27, 2002

Okay, I hate to be a spoil sport, but you left out "Indiana East" and "Arizona" -- i.e. the timezones that do not use DST and thus appear to be an hour off for half the year by their unenlightened neighboring timezones.
posted by hit-or-miss at 8:57 AM on January 2, 2003

And Saskatchewan. Don't forget Saskatchewan.
posted by iceberg273 at 7:16 AM on January 6, 2003