Add Timezone Field

[Clifford Paulick]

Idea For Gravity Forms Add-On:

Instead of adding a manual “select from many” timezone ‘select’ field, it’d be nice if after they enter their address it can populate their timezone.

Reference: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/timezone/

Another idea is to detect the timezone used by their browser.

Of course, allow them to manually override by physically clicking the select box and choosing a different one after it auto-selects one for them by their address/location/browser.

[Clifford Paulick]

Additional reference (and additional field types that could be added!): http://gf19.chrishajer.com/capture-geolocation-information/

And there are many other JS solutions out there for detecting a browser’s timezone (example use case: setting it per user in their user profile).

[Eyal Fitoussi]

Hello Clifford,
Thank you for the suggestions and for the references.

Instead of adding a manual “select from many” timezone ‘select’ field, it’d be nice if after they enter their address it can populate their timezone.

To which “Timezone” field are your referring to?

Additional reference (and additional field types that could be added!): http://gf19.chrishajer.com/capture-geolocation-information/

I have been thinking of adding an IP detection support for the plugin. However, geolocation based on IP address is not always accurate and is not alwasy working properly worldwide.
I will still look into it since it has been requested few times already.

[Clifford Paulick]

Not referring to any specific/existing field. Just saying that if you add a “timezone” field, you could at least narrow it down to the correct country (USA) and pick from one of those timezones (Hawaii, Alaska, Pacific, Mountain, Central, Eastern) and try to auto-select one for them (Central).

Another thing I thought of is that some places don’t observe Daylight Savings Time, so you could add a checkbox as part of the timezone field(s) that the user can specify “Central – Yes” or “Mountain – No”. Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_in_the_United_States

Yes, I know geo via IP isn’t perfectly accurate (if going through a VPN or detecting someone on a border, etc), but it can make answering the question of “what’s your timezone” DRASTICALLY better than WordPress’ General Settings picklist that includes many duplicates (e.g. Chicago and Dallas) and can’t be narrowed down/sorted.

[Eyal Fitoussi]

I do like the idea with the timezone.

I added it to my todo list. I will have to look into that when I am done with the current version of the plugin ( it has been taking too long already ) and other add-ons that I have been working on.

Thanks for the suggestion.

[Author]

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