Timezone universal date/time (Tiny) icon

Timezone universal date/time (Tiny)

Stop doing timezone arithmetic in forum posts. This TinyMCE editor plugin adds an "Insert date/time with timezone" button: the author picks a moment in their own timezone, and the plugin embeds it in the page together with its exact Unix timestamp and source timezone. Its companion filter (filter_timezone) then shows that moment to every reader in the reader's own local time — automatically correct across daylight-saving changes. Inserted times are atomic widgets in the editor (the caret can't wander inside them), can be edited in place, and degrade gracefully to the original text if the filter is disabled.
Price option: Free

Supports Moodle 5.0-5.2 See all versions
Latest release: 3 weeks ago
Installations: 1
Downloads (last 90 days): 15

Frankenstyle name: tiny_timezone
TinyMCE

Description

Timezone date/time (tiny_timezone) is a TinyMCE editor plugin for courses whose participants span timezones. Wherever the Tiny editor appears — labels, pages, forum posts, assignment descriptions — authors get a toolbar button and menu item that opens a small dialog: choose a date, a time and a timezone (defaulting to your own), and insert.

What lands in the content is a span carrying the moment as an exact Unix timestamp plus the authoring timezone, wrapped around a human-readable fallback rendering. The companion text filter, filter_timezone, rewrites that span at display time into each viewer's own timezone using Moodle's core date machinery — so "14:00 in London" reads "23:00" for a student in Sydney with no mental arithmetic and no DST mistakes. Without the filter, readers simply see the fallback text with its timezone name, so content never breaks.

The editing experience is carefully engineered: inserted date/times are atomic (contenteditable="false"), so the caret cannot slip inside and adjacent typing can never be swallowed; clicking an existing date/time reopens the dialog to update it in place rather than duplicating it. A capability (tiny/timezone:use) controls who may use the button. Requires Moodle 5.0+ and pairs with filter_timezone; CI covers Moodle 5.0–5.2.

Contributors

Awards

Privacy friendly