Changes

• FIXED: Reminder Setting did not get saved
• FIXED: Incorrect radius on inner border edge of time zone cards
• ADDED: Launch images
• ADDED: Support for taller iPhone 5 screen

The first item in this list kept back to haunt me after I had fixed the reminder problem in the previous problem. After testing I removed some extra logging code and removed one line too much. If you are a developer then you should appreciate the following screenshot:

This goes to show that you always should be testing apps before submission, even if all you (think you) removed where log statements.

I added launch images which at the same time enables the special taller mode on iPhone 5. Apps should generally have a default image that shows an “empty UI” to make the app feel faster to launch from scratch. It was only out of laziness that I didn’t have these before. Now with the iPhone 5 these launch images are the only way of enabling the taller resolutions. So I relented and added all three images.

Finally I had an incorrect radius on the inner corners of the thick border that is drawn around the time zone cards. This caused it to have a differing width in the corners.

The update has been submitted to Apple for approval.

Update Nov 20th: Unfortunately we did not notice until today that Apple had rejected the update because we didn’t yet upload 4″ iPhone screen shots. So we did that. And while doing so we found another newly introduced bug which we also fixed.

Update Nov 27th: The update has been approved by Apple.

• Fixed: Cannot search for timezones that have a space.
• Fixed: Some missing Time Zone localizations
• Fixed: Text alignment issues with longer count down durations or Time Zone names
• Fixed: Time Zone names not getting updated if system language was changed
• Fixed: Broken Reminder function
• Changed: first page is now always the local time zone
• Improved: Scrolling Performance in Timezone selector

There were some other “crufty” things that we addressed behind the scenes. The project was converted to ARC and the import process for localized timezone names was parallel-ized to achieve the much improved scrolling performance.

With the major UI redesign in version 1.1 we implemented a similar UX as the built-in weather app. In more recent iOS versions Apple removed the switch for the local weather and gave this the prominent position on the first page. Time zones have the advantage of being available regardless of the users permission settings for location information. Also it is highly likely that users would want to always get the daylight savings information for their current time zone.

This triggered the decision to do it like Apple. The first page is now always the local one. The user can still pick and sort any other world-wide time zones on the other pages.

When implementing all these updates we found that Apple had added new time zones that where unknown to us in iOS 4. Apparently as some regions “opt out” of Daylight Savings Time the international community establishes a time zone just for them. With some delay those regions then also end up on iOS.

Those new time zones for which we needed localization were:

• Africa/Juba
• America/Creston
• America/Kralendijk
• America/Lower_Princes
• America/Metlakatla
• America/North_Dakota/Beulah
• America/Sitka
• Asia/Hebron

I find it interesting that Apple is keeping on top of these developments (even when it takes them some time). This validates the strategy of this app to not use its own database but to get the DST information straight from the OS.

There was an other VERY embarrassing bug I also fixed in this release. For testing purposes I had the local notification always fire 10 seconds into the future. This is of course utter nonsense to have in a production app. This had only been reported by a single user in the past year, so there might not be very many people trying to use this. However now it is working as it should.

The update has been sent to Apple and we will report when it has been approved.

PS: When updating the screen shots for version 1.2 I found that I had forgotten about changing the screen shots for version 1.1. for other languages than English. This teaches us to always diligently update all screenshots for all languages you have on iTunes.

Updated September 12th: Update now approved and available on the app store.

I spend several days to enhance the functionality as described below and to polish it to a level where I can release it in time for the upcoming DST transitions. March 13th in the US and March 27th in Europe.

Updates

• NEW: Completely new Design
• NEW: Set multiple time zones for your travels
• NEW: Choose “Local Time Zone” to be automatically updated to your local time zone
• NEW: Multi-Language Time Zone picker

The update is now under review by Apple.

I’m rather proud of the new look which is modeled after the weather app.

Before (October 2009):

Now (March 2011):

I’ve been working on several ingredients that made this possible.

One part was to be able to localize the time zone name you see on the cards. This is typically in a form “Europe/Vienna” and there is no localization for it. The only localized description you get is for the “Central European Summer Time”. Quite an oversight I think, that’s why I started an Open Source project to have this available in a translated way as well: NSTimeZone+Localization. In order to get a well-performing way to group and filter the time zones I added a CoreData backend which re-imports all known time zones every time the locale or the iOS version changes. With this the grouping by continents is happening automatically for me and searching via the search bar on top is a snap.

Time zones which observe DST are shown in green. Those which are not are shown in red. This is also an interesting view of the world.

The second part is to eventually be able to make it a universal app that behaves like the weather app on iPhone and presents a novel card-based layout and interactions on iPad. I did not get the final 10% done in time for a release, so I set the target device family to iPhone-only for the time being. Displaying and managing cards works, but I have to think of a way to do what the i-button does on the iPhone version, display a sorting table view. The general idea of DTCards is to be able to fully reuse the views you are building for a utility iPhone app but make use of the wider space available on an iPad. DTCard would allow me to pinch-open on individual cards to zoom into a more detailed view, but in this context this also does not make sense, because I’m already displaying all there is to know about the next Daylight Savings Time transitions.

In short, the iPad UI is not ready. At the same time Summertime is one of my glorified hobbies with which I don’t really make nearly enough to warrant put in the midnight oil. I’ll finish the iPad UI if I ever have time or if somebody specifically asks for it or if suddenly sales go through the roof. IF to the power of 3.

There is one piece of functionality that gets shown only if you run iOS 4 or higher: the reminder button. When pushed it allows you to specify a reminder which happens in the form of a local push notification for the next transition. This way easy enough to implement but only came into iOS with version 4. Thus people still running an outdated 3.x only get the cog button for changing a card
s time zone and the mail button to e-mail somebody with the info on the card.

I posted some screenshots on twitter and feedback generally has been very favorable. Let’s see what the customers think as soon as Apple approves the update.

Update March 12th: Out now!