I can see the UTC time without clicking on a data cell. But I’m not in UTC, and for reliable entry, I really should be seeing and entering times, using the IDE, in my local zone, or a customer’s zone.
- The browser knows what zone I’m in, so it could show me the time (and date) adjusted for that.
- “Explicit is better than implicit”, so it should be abundantly clear (displayed) which zone it’s using for translation.
- If that’s not the zone I need to use for data-entry purposes, then I should be able to adjust that zone, before entering the datetime.
Example: I’m entering a “will shut down” time for my app (e.g., so that users will log off before maintenance starts). Say that’s 3am my time. Is that 5 hours different, or 4? Do I add or subtract? Did daylight saving time add another hour? Or subtract one? Does that mean entering a different date?
Any of those questions can and will be answered incorrectly, a good fraction of the time, if we continue to require manual adjustments in the datetime-picker.
Note that this does not require that the datetime be stored or listed differently than it is now. This solely concerns the data-entry widget.