Accepting the "I could do that in a weekend" challenge • Hacker News Board

Re: Accepting the "I could do that in a weekend" challenge

#11

Post by jonathanberger » Thu, Feb 18, 2010, 8:35 AM UTC

aw3c2 wrote: post #9

It does not seem to do anything without Javascript and times are always displayed in the (to me) awkward AM/PM format instead of 24 hour. The first is probably of no matter to you but how about a toggle button for the latter?

I do examine the browser's accept-language preferences and attempt to correctly do locale appropriate time formats. I've considered a toggle but am trying to keep the UI really simple. Are you from outside the US, and if so could you tell me your browser accept-lang settings (handy tool below)? http://www.cs.tut.fi/cgi-bin/run/~jkorpela/lang.cgi

Re: Accepting the "I could do that in a weekend" challenge

#12

Post by jonathanberger » Thu, Feb 18, 2010, 8:38 AM UTC

ComSubVie wrote: post #10

That's great! Your are absolutely correct, most sites seem to originate in pre-2000. Just two additional ideas: For the problem you specified I did find a interface which gives you a day view of both destinations with the corresponding times on both sides, and colored backgrounds (green for good meeting times, yellow for too early or too late or midday and red for night) so that you can easily find out an optimal mee…

Thanks, appreciate the compliment and ideas. I do remembering coming across that other site too.

I've been looking for a fun graphic or animation to jazz up the UI (I believe in making products "fun") so maybe the analog clock idea is it.

Re: Accepting the "I could do that in a weekend" challenge

#13

Post by Huppie » Thu, Feb 18, 2010, 8:39 AM UTC

jonathanberger wrote: post #8

vishaldpatel wrote: post #6

I'd add a date to the timezone converter. For example - if it is 10pm in Toronto on the 1st, then it is 8am somewhere in India on the 2nd.

Thanks for the suggestion. It's true omitting dates can affect some conversions. I left them out for speed/simplicity but might have be the wrong tradeoff.

I was about to suggest adding a 'previous/next day' somewhere but I see you already did that :)

Nicely fixed.

Re: Accepting the "I could do that in a weekend" challenge

#14

Post by jonathanberger » Thu, Feb 18, 2010, 8:40 AM UTC

tjogin wrote: post #7

Great, but if remaking Basecamp or StackOverflow also just takes a weekend, you should have been able to do this in about an hour.

Hah - true. :) Stack Overflow would have taken me longer.

Re: Accepting the "I could do that in a weekend" challenge

#15

Post by rimantas » Thu, Feb 18, 2010, 8:42 AM UTC

a) AM/PM vs. 24 hours clock. I'd suggest switching to 24 hours mode if input hours are > 12. There should also be a toggle for this. Remembering the setting (and possibly timezones) would be great.

b) Dates. These are redundant, but they can be shown if different in chosen TZ (or maybe just show something along the lines "already the next day/still yesterday" :)

Re: Accepting the "I could do that in a weekend" challenge

#16

Post by jonathanberger » Thu, Feb 18, 2010, 8:57 AM UTC

rimantas wrote: post #15

a) AM/PM vs. 24 hours clock. I'd suggest switching to 24 hours mode if input hours are > 12. There should also be a toggle for this. Remembering the setting (and possibly timezones) would be great. b) Dates. These are redundant, but they can be shown if different in chosen TZ (or maybe just show something along the lines "already the next day/still yesterday" :)

I like (a). I've been trying to avoid a toggle to keep things simple but noticing input behavior and switching automatically + storing in a cookie would work.

I need to update the blog screenshot, but (b) is incorporated almost exactly as you were thinking (see the light gray "next day" / "previous day" text).

Re: Accepting the "I could do that in a weekend" challenge

#17

Post by smiler » Thu, Feb 18, 2010, 9:05 AM UTC

I couldn't find any of the major Swiss cities in your city list. Any reason?

Re: Accepting the "I could do that in a weekend" challenge

#18

Post by cookiecaper » Thu, Feb 18, 2010, 9:07 AM UTC

tjogin wrote: post #7

Great, but if remaking Basecamp or StackOverflow also just takes a weekend, you should have been able to do this in about an hour.

Yeah, this isn't really comparable. This is a one-off utility. It performs one function. StackOverflow and Basecamp are full-fledged applications that incorporate thousands of functions.

Re: Accepting the "I could do that in a weekend" challenge

#19

Post by 10ren » Thu, Feb 18, 2010, 9:08 AM UTC

As a programmer, I find it very satisfying - you type in the name, it auto-completes; you change the time on either side, and it maintains the relation. Nice :-) And love the clean simplicity - it's like the google of timezone converters. :-)

- But it wasn't obvious that it would autocomplete - nice to have a drop-down even before typing, just to show the user. Or maybe just a couple of e.gs. (like google calendar's "breakfast at tiffany's").

- Also not obvious that you can change both times (I mean, it should work that way, but software never does, apart from languages - and I think that it wouldn't even occur to ordinary folk that it might).

Might be worth doing some user-testing (where you watch them, like "Step 2. Validate" in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1132980).

You can probably get some adwords revenue. And without spoiling it, by doing what the chatoulette guy said he did - just 4 words at the bottom.

Re: Accepting the "I could do that in a weekend" challenge

#20

Post by cookiecaper » Thu, Feb 18, 2010, 9:08 AM UTC

Have you looked at the library date.js? It might be helpful for you here. It seems unmaintained now but is still useful sometimes; not sure if it will help in this specific case, but might be worth a look.