Real-World JavaScript: The Date Object

We've all seen a JavaScript calendar or date-picker function. When logging on to buy an airline ticket, picking dates of a graphical calendar removes confusion about various nations' date formats (mm-dd-yy? mm-dd-yyyy? dd-mm-yyyy?) and can be used to ensure that a return date that is earlier than a departure date cannot be chosen. It's a visual way of combining error-checking validation with a usable interface to avoid user confusion.

In this series of tutorials, Tom shows how to build a customisable, skinnable JavaScript date-picker. In the first tutorial, Tom introduces us to the Date Object - the heart of all JavaScript date processing functions -and shows how to use it, as well as showing how to avoid the legendary gotchas, and therefore save you time and frustration.

This tutorial is for the intermediate developers in JavaScript.