Moon Sign Calculator and Time Zones

When I initially implemented the Moon Sign Calculator, I created a time zone selector that would allow to choose pretty much any time zone of those provided by the computing platform. You could choose a region, and then any time zone within that region.

Technically, that was a superior solution. The system of time zones in the world is quite complex, a lot more complex than it is commonly assumed, especially when taking into account historical changes. Therefore, even if you had to spend some time to figure out which time zone was the most appropriate for you, the result could be the most precise, within the limitations of the platform.

However, that solution proved to be very user-unfriendly. Many visitors, looking at the time zone selector, either were simply puzzled by it, or decided that they need to find their precise birth place in the list. For example, if they were born in Mumbai, they would not be satisfied by the time zone Asia/Kolkata, even though the whole India shares one and the same time zone.

It is important to understand that to calculate the Moon Sign, you do not need the precise place of birth (its longitude and latitude). All you need is the time zone. All locations in the UK are in the same time zone, and all locations in India are in the same time zone. 

So when I received yet another email blaming me for not providing a list of all possible locations around the world in the Moon Sign Calculator, I decided to make a change. I got rid of the old time zone selector and replaced it with an entirely new one.

Now, there is an explicit list of time zones, modelled after a similar list of Windows operating system. It is less flexible than the old solution but it is much easier to use, I hope. Here is how it looks:



I still left the old solution in the Sun Sign Calculator, just to see how the new one will be accepted by Lunarium visitors. However, with time I am going to replace it with the new one too.


Comments

  1. Nancy2:34 pm

    Hello,
    I'm only recently interested in astrology and things like that. And until now I only knew about sign calculator were you can't select the time zone seperat, such as this one: http://www.astrosofa.com/horoscope/ascendant
    Your solution is a very interesting approach, that I've never seen before...

    Regards, Harry

    ReplyDelete

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