24h clock for timestamps instead of AM/PM.

idea
1

This would be a great option to have for us international users since we never use AM/PM.

You could just implement it based on the timezone you have chosen in ‘Preferences’.

Since I have chosen GMT+1 Amsterdam, Berlin, Stockholm the timestamps on posts should be displayed in a 24h format where as if you have selected GMT-8/7/6/5 (US & Canada) the timestamps are in AM/PM.

98 Likes
2

I guess that settles it. The best implementation would be to simply have it as an option in the ‘Preferences’ page.

3

Great idea. I’ll add it to my short-term priority list.

1 Like
4

Short-term eh? :wink:

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One option would be to have AM/PM, 24h, and a freefield - where people can enter their time specifications based on http://docs.python.org/2/library/time… ?

1 Like
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@Cobrian: Define ‘short-term’! :wink:

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Well, I’m wondering how you define ‘long-term’ ? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Also, FWIW. In the UK am/pm is pretty common too. I don’t have a strong preference personally though. Letting people choose sounds best.

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Well, it was on the short-term list and then got pushed off. I may be more willing to do it now, but I need a definitive list of date formats. I already have to support two different formats, but I’m willing to consider a rewrite to the date system because I now have to support client-side dates due to offline in ios.

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Do it in the parent thread below, not on this subthread.

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So what’s a good list of date formats you want? Just the one, 2013-07-15 13:50 instead of 17 Jul 2013, 1:50pm? I think you really just want a 24h clock, where the date can remain the same. That’s a bit easier to build and may be the way I go.

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For me, the date is definitely part of the issue too. There are a lot of non-English speakers around the world and it is _very_ inconvenient to translate dates from foreign abbreviations and completely unusual format. Unambiguous number format (i.e. ISO format, not any 02/03/13 × 03/02/13 mess) is far better.

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There is not only Europe and US. And there is a lot of different formats in Europe too (15. 7. 2013 13.50 in my country, for example; UK uses switched US notation etc.). That is the reason I really strongly recommend to support at least ISO 8601 as the gold basic format. Any other additional format is good but ISO 8601 is the must.

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BTW, how about custom formats? https://getsatisfaction.com/newsblur/…

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If it has to be this complicated, I won’t find time to build it. If you want half of it, which is just the 24h clock, then I can build that. But if that doesn’t do it, then I’ll have to prioritize the entire feature for down the line.

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24h clock is definitely step in good direction. If you can do just this, please do.

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You could have people select a locale from a list… I think I recall NewsBlur is Python based… so if you have a locale you could do something like this to format the date according to the user’s locale: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/98…

Or just use ISO-8601.

18

What would probably cover most cases would be three options:

  1. Date order: DD-MM-YYYY, MM-DD-YYYY, YYYY-MM-DD (I don’t think anybody uses YYYY-DD-MM, but I might be wrong)
  2. Delimiter: choose between ‘/’, ‘-’ and ‘.’ – maybe replace this with or add a field where one can enter their preference.
  3. Time format: AM/PM or 24h

This way most people could set up their preferred way easily without having to rely on guesses based on time zones, IP location, or anything else that would likely fail on many occasions.

1 Like
19

This would be my preference too. But as Stefan Wolff mentioned, you might want to include a few different formats, or allow us to create individual formats.

20

Sam,

It’s been two years for now.
Is there any chance to solve this in this millennium?