Stupidly annoying time thing - Please help, Richard!

Funny thing Rod. I noticed this over the past few days, but I assumed it was "genuine" - I travelled from Vernon BC over to Jasper, then Banff in Alberta, then back to Vernon. Changing from Pacific Coast time to Mountain time then back.

The time at the top of the i-pad was always correct ie it changed automatically. but I pressed the little clock icon anyway and...........nothing.

I just put it down to a Naim software incompetence thingy.........they do seem capable of getting these little details annoyingly wrong (bit like my spelling !)

Don, the forum software is down to Social Strata.  Rod, I have found that keeping all software fully up to date and ensuring that everything is set to English UK seems to ensure that the time and date is shown correctly...  for the UK.  Only time I've seen what you are seeing is (strangely enough) when I go to France.  Other than that,. I'll have to consult with SS.  It seems to be some kind of time zone conflict taking place.

When we were in France in August I got that really annoying South Africa time thing all the time. I just put up with it, but it was only for two and a bit weeks. We went to France last weekend and it did it again. Back home again it’s fine. The US is hardly without time zones, so it’s weird that it does it at all. 

Richard Dane posted:

Don, the forum software is down to Social Strata. 

Oops ! forgot. Apoligies.

The forum software does seem to have a mind of its own sometimes. In the past I’ve had the date switch randomly to US format, and for a long time Safari would only show pages in mobile (portrait) format, which was a little irritating. Seems to be well behaved at the moment, though. 

Rod,

Social Strata have got back to me;

That does sound like an amazingly annoying issue to have. Could you get some more details from the members who are effected? Specifically, it would be great to know what version of Safari and iPhone they are experiencing the problem with.

The member mentioned being stuck between "Central European Summer Time"and "South African Standard Time" and that if they updated their timezone pref on the site that the popup would just appear. Did updating their settings actually switch their timezone, but then the app thought they were on the other one? Or did the setting change just not do anything?

Getting a better understanding of that part of the problem I think might be vital towards figuring out what is going on and determining how to solve it.

Could you let me know and I'll pass on the info.

Test reply from iphone - time change warning ignored (Posted at 19:19 French time)

Test reply from iphone - time changed to “South Africa Standard Time”  (Posted at 19:20 French time)

Thanks Richard!

Something seems to have changed (see below), so maybe they are working on it, but the problem persists.

Here are the devices I have which are affected.

I am in Nice, Central Europe Time (I guess!):

iPhone 7 : iOS 11.4 (15F79)

iPhone 6 : iOS 11.4.1 (15G77)

iPad Pro (9.7) : IOS 11.2.6 (15D100)

Nothing on my MacBook Pro

Also on these old devices: 

iPhone 4S : iOS 9.3.5 (13G36)

iPad 2 : iOS 9.3.5 (13G36)

If I change the time zone to 'South Africa Standard Time' (Which is wrong, as demonstrated above, in fact currently France and South Africa are on the same time) then it does not seem to prompt me again (so far anyway). If I click 'Do not update' or just click the cross in the top RH corner of the 'warning', then it re-prompts.

I sent two test posts, one without having changed the time, and one having accepted the South Africa change. I cannot see the recorded time they were posted, only one minute ago/one second ago. SO I cannot really team whether it changed my timezone or not. 

Hopefully, also, the screenshots above in my first post should help.

Others appear to have had the problem when visiting France (and specifically with this phantom incorrect South Africa choice)  but I live here (and travel frequently, thus changing time zones often) so I encounter it all the time.

Please let me know if they would like any further info.

Thank you very much for investigating - I am sure you have better things to do.

(Adam is in France, n'est-çe pas? - does he not have the same issue?)

Cheers

Rod

Thanks Rod, I'll pass on the info and see what comes back.

p.s. Adam is back in Blighty these days.

OK, this is from Social Strata, who thank you for providing the info;

It sounds like there are two issues:

1. The dismissal of the timezone change is not being remembered.
2. The application is not accurately inferring the timezone from the users device.

It's good that it seems to stick when they accept the incorrect timezone, since that is what I would have expected. The process that checks the timezone should be consistent in which timezone it detects, and if that was jumping back and forth between two of them that would have been extremely unexpected.

It may take some time before we are able to dig into this and come up with a solution. In the meantime, have your users accept the recommended timezone. That way they won't continue to be prompted. Ideally they should be able to dismiss that and not have to see it again for that dismissed timezone, so that may be something we have to add.

The timezone is only used for rendering dates to the user, and is not stored directly with their posts. So, I am not surprised that they were not seeing a difference on their posts.

Warning came back this morning. Have re-accepted the change to “South Africa” time, but it seems to have some time delay before reprompting.

But I’m sure it used to do this more frequently, although I used to click ‘do not change time zone’ (because it was right and the proposed change was wrong) and that didn’t seem to do anything. 

Still, it’s good they are looking at it, and thanks again.

Rod

Thanks Rod, I'll pass that on and we'll see what they come up with in due course.

Thanks for rising the issue 

totally annoying for us jumping over time zones almost every day...

Very slightly off topic, but referred to earlier, I find the US date format annoying. I've never been able to correct it.  I'm in England, and have always only looked at the forum in this country

Chris, so long as all OS software and browser are kept up to date and both OS and browser are set to UK English or British then it should show correctly.

I’ve had the US date format issue too. It came and went at random, and once there, no OS update or setting change would budge it. 

Chris, sometimes I have found you need to clear cookies and/or log out then back in again. I do a fairly regular cache & cookie clean out as a matter of policy these days, which seems to make everything work more smoothly, although you do need to remember all your passwords!

Richard, I think we had the same conversation on here at the time. I tried everything, but it seems HoopLa has a mind of its own. These various issues seemed to come and go at random, and not in response to anything I did. It’s been a while now since I’ve noticed any of these issues, and in the general scheme of things, they are hardly worth losing sleep over!

I'm now being told to change back from the South Africa thing to the Central French time, which they claim are different (although they aren't). Most peculiar.

But I guess there was never a chance of a resolution over a weekend, and I am relieved that they are looking into it.

Plus, I just made myself a lovely Negroni!

Cheers

Rod

This continues to happen. It really is annoying!!

(Their system still believes that South Africa and France are in different time zones)

Thanks Rod, last I heard they were looking into it and would let me know.  Nothing more too add, as yet.

I have changed time zones several times during the past 6 weeks. We are currently in Estepona. The “you seem to have changed time zones” popped up as usual, but having acknowledged it and accepted the change, it has disappeared.

When we get back to the U.K., I expect it will re-appear and I guess another simple click will restore things back to U.K. time.

What I didn’t try, was clicking the “don’t change” option. In fact, I don’t quite recall what the options were. But will try them when I get back.