Metric Display Test

[pb]

We're just about ready to give everyone a way to view the entire site in metric units, but we'd like to do some testing first.

We have a switch in place that will turn all instances of mpg into L/100km, all miles into km, and all gallons into litres. Here's what a standard car profile basic stats display looks like in metric units:



If you'd like to help us test this feature, you can turn on metric display here: display metric units. And you can turn it off here: display English units.

Once set, you should see metric units across the site: browsing cars, recent activity, your dashboard, and your car profile pages. Please let us know if these are the units you expect to see, and if everything is working for you in the metric view.

(Currency conversion is a next natural step—Fuelly is expecting everything in US Dollars right now. It's the next item on our internationalization to-do list.)

[RolandOfAwesome]

Speaking as an Englishman, the choice is a little confusing - I don't think "English" is the best choice of name for the units, since in England we use mostly metric units, and although we use gallons for MPG, Imperial gallons (as used in the UK) are different to US gallons. This means someone in the UK setting their preferences to gallons would be getting an "incorrect" MPG (e.g. 50 MPG (imperial) = 41 MPG (US)).

Not sure what you should substitute for "English", according to Wikipedia the correct term is "United States customary units". I recognise that (according to Wiki) "English" is a common term for the USCUs, but I feel it would only confuse new British users.

Christ, can't we all just change to metric and stick with that??

[RolandOfAwesome]

Huh, tried out the metric switch, and something's gone wrong.

I had one fuel-up with 26-ish litres at 1.129/l, and now I've switched to metric it says I bought 88 litres at 0.30/l. I'm guessing the site didn't know I already entered that data in metric (Track fuel in: Litres) and converted to metric again?

[mathowie]

Hey Roland, we've changed the header to say US instead of "English" on units.

For your fuel-up, I think you might have added that before we had the metric fill up options in place. I'd say go back and edit the fill up to be 26L and see if that gets stored properly. If not, report back here and we'll fix up the bug.

[RolandOfAwesome]

I tried that and it worked. I definitely added the data after I'd set the Track fuel in: litres option though.

[RolandOfAwesome]

Oh, another thought: you might want to specify the odometer reading units, if you're having a global US/metric switch. i.e. my odometer is in miles and I entered it as such, but I'm not sure whether the site is actually assuming it's km now that I've hit the metric link.

[mathowie]

Naw, Roland, the US/Metric option is just for viewing data on the site, it doesn't affect your fuel up screen, which is set in your car's preferences.

[mremrich]

I'm viewing in metric, and the best L/100km shows my best mpg. I've only fueld up once, and everything else is correct, except for that field.

[pb]

Thanks mremrich, fixed that up.

[DarkBahamut]

This is certainly a good step towards making the site more available to everyone. Do you plan to add imperial gallons as an option at some point for us UK folk? It should be a fairly simple change from the current US system, as you just need to change the conversion for litres to gallons and the rest should work itself out with a new button like teh current metric system?

Good work so far though!