The Automatic Date Trick

Today is

Nothing surprising there!

And I'm sure that you know that I don't open up my web editing software every day just so that I can change the date. Of course not! It's all done with a few lines of JavaScript which picks up the date information from the visitor's computer and displays it on the web page. Here's the full script if you want to copy it:

<script language="JavaScript">
<!--
var days=new Array(8);
days[1] = "Sun";
days[2] = "Mon";
days[3] = "Tue";
days[4] = "Wed";
days[5] = "Thu";
days[6] = "Fri";
days[7] = "Sat";
var months=new Array(13);
months[1] = "Jan";
months[2] = "Feb";
months[3] = "Mar";
months[4] = "Apr";
months[5] = "May";
months[6] = "Jun";
months[7] = "Jul";
months[8] = "Aug";
months[9] = "Sep";
months[10] = "Oct";
months[11] = "Nov";
months[12] = "Dec";
var dateObj=new Date()
var wday=days[dateObj.getDay() + 1]
var lmonth=months[dateObj.getMonth() + 1]
var date=dateObj.getDate()
var year=dateObj.getYear()
if (year >= 100 && year <= 1999)
{year=year + 1900}
else
{year=year}
document.write(wday + ", " + date+ " " + lmonth + " " + year)
// -->
</script>

If you want to put in the full word for "Mon" or "Jan", you just need to change the wording in the script.

You'll have been on to many websites (including some of mine) which have something like:

"From The Desk Of Joe Bloggs", followed by the current date.

And you know what? Sometimes, if you scroll to the end of the page, you'll see something like:

© 2005

It's a bit of a giveaway, isn't it. There's the guy trying to make out that the page is fresh and new, and there's the copyright notice proclaiming that the page is a couple of years old.

But it's really very simple to modify the script, making it shorter, so that only the current year is picked up from the visitor's computer and then using it to display a copyright date. Here's the full code:

&copy;
<script language="JavaScript">
<!--
var year=dateObj.getYear()
if (year >= 100 && year <= 1999)
{year=year + 1900}
else
{year=year}
document.write(year)
// -->
</script>

And here it is in action:

©

If you don't believe me, try altering the year temporarily on your computer's clock and then refresh this page! (I'm not responsible if this triggers off all sorts of date-related activities on your computer!)

The "&copy;", incidentally, is simply the HTML for inserting the copyright symbol.

So, it's really easy to insert code such as this at the end of all of your web pages, convincing the visitor that the pages really have been built in the current year!

Of course, you can take the basic date script and do a lot more with it. For example, instead of (or maybe as well as) having the copyright year at the bottom of the page, you could use the words "This page last updated on" - and add the script to insert the current date. You can leave out the day of the week simply by deleting "wday + ", " + " from the line starting "document.write". Then it looks as if you updated the page on that very same date - today.

And then there's the "Special Offer Only Available Until". That also uses a similar script, pulling the date off the visitor's computer and adding "x" days to it. That's a little trickier, and I'm not going to go into details now - maybe some other time.

But you can see how a little Javascript on your web page can give your visitors an impression of your page being right up to date. And don't forget, whilst you might be well aware that there's trickery going on, a lot of your website visitors will be blissfully ignorant :-)

I hope you've found this useful.