[Design] Floating timezones

[Bryan Stearns]

+1 to all of Philippe's summation.

Philippe Bossut wrote:

> Hi,
>
> So it seems clear now thanks to Grant and Jeffrey analysis that iCal 
> doesn't do item TZ modification when changing the pref and neither 
> should we. Good.
>
> Jeffrey Harris wrote:
>
>> Do we really want timezone UI to be invisible by default?  Even if there
>> are dissenters, I think more than 50% of our target users will regularly
>> use time zones, how do we help them discover the time zone features if
>> they're hidden by default?
>>
> This is the problem with prefs in general (discoverability). We 
> already had a similar discussion when discussing prefs in general on 
> the dev list in November 
> (http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/dev/2005-November/004298.html) 
> with wildely differing views. I think we agreed on saying that 
> preferences are useful but we shouldn't hide important critical data 
> in them.
> In this particular instance, I think that people motivated by TZ will 
> go check the prefs though (as they do in iCal). However, that also 
> means that the default behavior should be consistent with other apps 
> and the system and that we should use the system local TZ (as iCal 
> does) rather than floating (which is a rather unusual setting). I 
> think most people assume that system wide prefs are used as 
> appropriate by all apps.
>
> Cheers,
> - Philippe
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