Forum: Bug Report and Feature Requests

Inconsistent date display

madnige 🚫

Just a minor thing that can be ignored until it's sensible to deal with: the 'Latest' column in 'Authors starting with ...' pages is in a fixed site-local format in site-local time rather than the user-local format in user-local time like most other dates, which means that it's possible to have the 'Latest' date not match the latest date on that author's storylist pages.

An example is Lazlong, where the 'Latest' date is 2008-05-18, but the date I see on the storylistings page is 19/05/2008, 00:28:15 (in BST) for 'Jed'

I'm pretty sure all the dates on the StoryInfo pages have the same problem, but Blog entries (which I'd noted in the past didn't match the Home page dates for the same post) now do not suffer from it - they now use toLocaleDateString.

Replies: Dominions Son Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

Dominions Son 🚫
Updated:

@madnige

Edited.

Canada mostly uses the same time zones as the US, though they have an extra one on the east coast.

IIRC SOL is in the Central time zone which would mean Central Standard Time (CST) or Central Daylight Time (CDT). Parts of Canada don't use Daylight time. and Lazeez may not use it on the servers to save admin work.

In my personal experience in IT is that Time Zone adjustments are generally not made for Date only fields.

CST would be UTC - 6 and BST is UTC - 1. With BST coming out at 00:28 for time (I see 6:28 PM in Central)

That would explain the date difference.

Replies: Dinsdale

Dinsdale 🚫

@Dominions Son

He is saying that the 'Latest' date is the one which varies, he himself is on BST.

Replies: Dominions Son

Dominions Son 🚫

@Dinsdale

He is saying that the 'Latest' date is the one which varies, he himself is on BST.

Yeah, I caught that after I posted. Edited the post to correct that and add further explanation.

Keet 🚫

The differences occur because most dates on SOL are converted to the local timezone and culture but some others are not (even if it's supposed to be same date).
If you switch of javascript all dates will probably be the same because the conversion can't be done and the page code will default to the same timezone/culture as is used for the fixed dates.

Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

@madnige

In the authors' listings I don't use toLocaleDateString for aesthetic reasons.

On smaller screens it would break the date/time in half or force the break of the author's name and crowd the interface.

In a listing like the authors' listings, the exact date is not exactly crucial, an author's date is highlighted for 7 days after the update, so I judged it to be an acceptable compromise.

Is it really that important to you when the dates are off by less than a day?

By the way, SOL is in the Eastern zone. The system code handles the Daytime savings issues, so I never change any settings. Whenever the server displays the date is in Eastern zone, and client-side date.toLocaleDateString converts the unix time stored in the database to the user's format and time zone.

Dinsdale 🚫

Another - similar - case, the timestamps on "Reader Comments".
Initially they are provided in a form which matches my timezone and my locale's date-format.
Starting with Page 2 of the comments (and Page 1 if I click on that "1" as a page-number) they are formatted yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss am/pm, the timezone is also that of SOL rather than my local one.

Is it important to me? Hell no - just weird.

Replies: Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

@Dinsdale

Starting with Page 2 of the comments (and Page 1 if I click on that "1" as a page-number) they are formatted yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss am/pm, the timezone is also that of SOL rather than my local one.

That's due to browser security. The initial batch is loaded with the page and I use a bit of JavaScript to display the date in your format and time. HTML loaded via JavaScript like the subsequent pages can't execute JavaScripts, so can't use the date.tolocaledate to display in your format, so it comes pre-formatted on the server side with no customization.

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Forum: Bug Report and Feature Requests

Inconsistent date display

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