363111 - Need ability to specify timezone when creating an event

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 395287

(Calendar :: General, defect)

Description

[cmtalbert]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla Thunderbird version 2 beta 1 (20061203) Lightning: 2006120406 

Need to be able to pick the timezone that an event occurs in. For example, I was just trying to create an ICS file for the calendar Team status meeting. The calendar Status meeting takes place at 17:00 UTC. I could not create this event because there is no way to create an event in UTC in Sunbird/Lightning. You cannot  even set the gloabal timezone to UTC.

Ideally, I believe this should take the form of a timezone picker on the event dialog. The prototype event dialog already has this as I recall, but we should definitely make that a feature of whichever dialog is chosen as the default.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Attempt to schedule an event that occurs at 17:00 UTC
2.Open Event Dialog
3.Realize there is no mechanism to specify this event's timezone on the event dialog or through any menu after event creation.


Actual Results:  
There is no way to schedule a UTC event in the current product.

Expected Results:  
There should be. When people schedule meetings between two timezones, they often will simply pick one timezone and schedule it relative to that zone. However, when the meeting involves participants in 3 or more timezones, they usually default to UTC as the standard. Therefore, we should be able to support the ability to schedule an event in something other than the global Sunbird/Lightning timezone (which is set in the preference settings).

Because this is a minor use case of the product that is impossible to perform, I am going to mark this as with "normal" severity rather than an enhancement.

Comment 2

[David Gessel]

As enumerated in 364750, in addition to scheduling an event in a time zone other than the preferred time zone, it would be useful permit scheduling the start and end times of an event in different time zones to make scheduling flights easier.  This is a non-trivial use case (as flight schedules are reported in local time zones) and can be important (unavailable time) and daunting for the arithmetic challenged to compute manually.

The need for this UI improvement is not just for scheduling in UTC - if one is traveling and scheduling events in time zones one will be in, but is not currently in, and is working with data in the to-be-in time zone, it is far more convenient to set the time zone for the event rather than change the preferences time zone temporarily while scheduling and then set it back (as is the suggested work-around for Outlook).

Comment 3

[Michael Büttner (no reviews TFN)]

I'd propose to merge this functionality from the prototype event dialog. Dan or mvl, any comments?

Comment 4

[David Gessel]

I found this on a remote google groups, which is a copy of repost, which is a copy of a post on /., which I wrote originally, so to close the loop, I thought I'd repost it here as 0.61 doesn't have "create event in other time zone" capability.

I found this post (which is a copy in itself) on
http://diary.e-gandalf.net/?p=35

This makes a lot of sense, so I thought I'd post it in a more
appropriate place (here). As it's a long read, in short the writer says
that adding a timezone to an event more clearly marks the actual time an
event takes place. For people who travel from timezone to timezone, this
is a great (and as the writer argues) a quite unique feature, which is
rather poorly handled by the 'competition'.

#

18. Tim Schoenfelder  |  June 12th, 2005 at 11:22 am

 From the slashdot article today (
http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/05/06/12/017227.shtml?tid=185&tid=4
), I thought that the following comment posted by a widely traveled
person about a desired feature would make this aapplication unique and
valuable if it is implemented:

Re:Outlook 2003 (Score:5, Informative)
by gessel (310103) on Saturday June 11, @10:02PM (#12792275)
(http://www.dis.org/gessel)

Does anyone who ever worked on Outlook ever get on a plane? Ever? Do
they know what a time zone is?

There is only one program I’ve found that handles time zones correctly:
TrueSync Desktop and it is abandonware. I kept buying motorola P8167s
for years just so I could stick with TSD.

There are two features of TrueSync Desktop that no other PIM seems to do
correctly, and there is only one correct method. The two features are:

1) When you create an standard event, you specify the time zone the
event will happen in. All time zone math is handled automatically. This
is the only correct method of handling events for people who travel
outside their time zone regularly.

2) When you mark a special day, say a birthday or a holiday, TSD
remembers the date, rather than creating a 24 hour event from 0:00 to
23:59. This is the only correct way to handle special days.

Consider the following scenarios, which I face almost every week:

A) You are in California on the phone with someone in Boston planning a
phone conference from 10:00-11:30am for next week at which time you’ll
be in London. What time should you set the conference for? Can you do
the math? How about if you’re in Phoenix in April? There are 31 time
zones and almost all contain some regions that observe and some that do
not observe DST. This is the sort of irritating arithmetic my computer
should do, and only True Sync Desktop does it the right way.

With Outlook can set your system time zone to the time zone the event
will happen in, then create the event, then set your time zone back to
the time zone you’re in. Oh yeah, that’s really convenient.

B) You make a new friend on a visit a trip that includes a visit to
Hawaii and Boston and put her birthday in your outlook/phone tools
calendar. You get to San Francisco. What day is her birthday? With
outlook when you change time zones the event straddles two days, only
one of them the actual correct day. Depending on whether you travel east
or west, the correct date is either the first or the second of the two
days marked. How flabbergastingly stupid is that?

Now one would think that _someone_ (anyone) involved in the development
of outlook would, sooner or later, actually travel to a different time
zone and realize just how utterly brain dead their handling of time
zones really is (yes, outlook supports two (2)whole time zones, and for
purely bicoastal people that’s fine, but some of us actually travel to
the flyover states occasionally. And some people even travel outside the
US, which is still legal.)

I personally can’t stand the outlook look and feel. I find it sort of
smothering, though I acknowledge that there are some good features to
it, but if there’s one good model for how a PIM should work it’s True
Sync Desktop, but since it won’t sync to a modern phone, it’s just not
all that useful anymore, sadly.

Thanks to my incessant whining, BVRP has put time zones on it’s feature
path, so Motorola’s PhoneTools might soon correctly implement time zones
and all-day events, probably more quickly if more people encourage them to.

Comment 5

[David Gessel]

Attachment: proposed event create dialog with time zone selection

Comment 6

[Bas van den Bosch]

David, I like your proposal (except for some gui-things) but I don't know wether the math in the views will be able to handle different timezones for dtstart and dtend as for example you'll be able to have events with negative lengths... Did you try this already (editing ics-files by hand?)

Comment 7

[David Gessel]

DTSTART;TZID=/mozilla.org/20070129_1/America/New_York:20070514T140000
DTEND;TZID=/mozilla.org/20070129_1/America/Los_Angeles:20070514T150000

Does the right thing.  The event duration is 4 hours, not 1 hour.  

We just need a UI to get to it.

Now there are some -real- problems with the UI for frequent travelers.  

1) Changing time zones is, for many, a daily event.  Why is it buried and what is up with the semi-infinite list of real and fake locations?  I'm no windows fan, but the system time zone selector is infinitely more usable.  At the very least the list should be in time zone order, not alphabetic by continent.  The list is derived from the Unix system set up list, something you use once per system, not on a regular basis.  Cute (dawsons creek) has no place in it.  If emulating windows is too bitter, then this is a really nice graphical interface: http://www.worldtimezone.com/ - though it would be really helpful to have a complete enumerated list. If cities are so important as a selection (why?) then in the selection pane, have a second pane that enumerates the large cities in the selected time zone and a "find city" option.  

2) Current time zone should be right at the front, a pop-up next to Month view with "favorites" (selected from the "options" list) is really important.  It is critical - beyond critical - that I know what time zone my calendar thinks it is creating an event in (and of course that it respects that choice).  Like many people, I am very frequently in 3 and sometimes 4 time zones in a single day and scheduling events at every stop-over.  Those events are rarely being scheduled for the time zone I happen to be in.   Supporting people who travel would be a key -and monumental- improvement over outlook, which simply does not.  At all.

3) Day view should have multiple time zones on the left side, as many as you want (yes, it looks like Outlook's 2 time zones, but support more and beat them!)  Right click to bring up a list of favorites and "other" time zones to add.  Current always stays (that is the one selected in (2) above), the rest have close boxes.  You're on the phone with people in India, Japan, the east coast, Australia and SF and trying to schedule a meeting.  Add their time zones to your view and you can instantly tell who's going to be able to speak coherently.  This is essential to support people who work regularly with people in other time zones (as well as travel) and a key differentiator against outlook, which does not.  At all.

Comment 8

[Bas van den Bosch]

To answer one of your questions: It's not enough to use the timezones from the map at worldtimezone.com. For example: colombia, ecuador and peru don't have the same DST as New York. The timezones are geographical, DST's are political. The Calendar-project uses the Olson-database:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_zone

Comment 9

[David Gessel]

Understood regarding DST: I meant to suggest the graphic as a model for a UI to pick.  A giant list of all of them is not usable on a regular basis, and to the extent that one travels, one must change time zones. I did not mean to suggest copying it literally (it appears a bit crude to my eye, the CIA world factbook image referenced in the wikipedia article is much more attractive). 

I think the key UI provision is a "favorites" subset from the full list megaset to which favorite time zones can be added or removed.   For example, though users need to be able to differentiate from NY, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, I shouldn't have to do so every time I want to change from PST/PDT to EST/EDT.

It would certainly be acceptable to create a favorites list from the complete list, even in list rather than graphic form, so long as doing so was part of "setup" rather than use.  The current paradigm is that selecting a time zone is a "setup" operation rather than a regular use operation and that isn't consistent with the needs of traveling users.

Comment 10

[Michael Büttner (no reviews TFN)]

This feature is already available, please see [1] for details. Probably the problem is that it is disabled by default. Just use the menu in the event dialog Options -> Timezone. If this option is off the event times are shown in the local lightning timezone. Otherwise the times are shown in their respective timezones as specified in the event.

Selecting a timezone is a completely different story. The timezone dialog in the current state is not final, that's for sure. Please see [2] for the current plans on how this should look like. This timezone picker will also replace the current implementation in the preferences.

[1] http://wiki.mozilla.org/Calendar:SMB_Event_Dialog#14._.22Timezone.22_Hyperlink
[2] http://wiki.mozilla.org/Calendar:SMB_Event_Dialog_Timezone-Dialog

Comment 11

[Stefan Sitter [:ssitter]]

The prototype dialog is enabled by default now and allows to specify a custom timezone when creating an event. Clint, David could you retest with a current 0.7pre nightly build if this bug can be resolved?

Comment 12

[David Gessel]

The latest build is a big improvement.  I like the graphic representation, but I still find selecting a target timezone from a scrolling list 10's of pages long to be an unnecessary burden.  If we could add a "favorites" subset of the complete list I think this issue would be resolved.  I would still yearn for being able to set different start and end timezones (as in my comment #7) as this is a common use case when flying and is the standard presentation for flight appointments (departure and arrival times are given in their respective time zones).

0.7 seems to break the google calendars plug-in, alas.

-David


-David

Comment 13

[Bas van den Bosch]

I suggest not to close this bug, David's request in comment 2 is clear, the ability to have different timezones for start and end is needed. David, as for the subnset, could you open a new bug for this?

Comment 14

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen][📱📆]]

David: the nightly versions of gdata work fine with 0.7, see the list of bugs for 0.2.2.

Comment 15

[cmtalbert]

(In reply to comment #13)
> I suggest not to close this bug, David's request in comment 2 is clear, the
> ability to have different timezones for start and end is needed. David, as for
> the subnset, could you open a new bug for this?
> 

This is also being tracked as one of my review comments from the prototype event dialog review: bug 395287. 

Perhaps these two bugs should be duped?

I think that we should also investigate a follow-on bug for the User Experience issue that David mentions in comment 12.  Users really want to be able to click on the map to select their timezone.  Not the giant list timezones.
Does anyone know if there is a bug on that already?

Comment 16

[Bas van den Bosch]

Let's make this a dupe of bug 395287 as that's about the proto-dialog which we use now (and you commited this bug originally). As for the map of the timezone's: I disagree per comment 8. Bug 302253 already has a first draft for a patch lying around (for some years so it seems) and an image which is licensed to use by mozilla. I see that as something else which is noted in comment 12 but maybe the discussion in bug 224905 will help for this. -> duplicate of 395287