187816 - tva.gov - javascript date problem prevents data display

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English US, defect)

Description

[Bob Smith]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.3a) Gecko/20021212
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.3a) Gecko/20021212

In the site-specific pages accessible from
http://www.tva.gov/greenpowerswitch/solar_sites.htm , data and charts should be
displayed after valid dates are selected (and Go is hit).  In Mozilla, an error
message like "You must select a date earlier than today's date. Today is January
5,." is displayed instead. iE 6.0 displays the data and charts.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to URL.
2. Scroll down, select valid previous date such as 04 January, 2002
3. Hit Go.

Actual Results:  
Error message popup is displayed.

Expected Results:  
Display site-specific "Fast Facts" table and solar power chart.

Using default theme, tabs.  Saw other javascript date bugs listed, but didn't
wade through them all (sorry).

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

The site seems to just be buggy... it basically does:

todays = ((new Date()) + '').split(' ');

and then assumes the last element in the array is the year (it's actually the
timezone name).

Comment 2

[Bob Smith]

*** Bug 187820 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 3

[Phil Schwartau]

Attachment: Reduced testcase

Comment 4

[Phil Schwartau]

Boris' analysis is correct. Load the reduced testcase and hit 'Test'.
In NN4.7 and IE6, the date passes as valid; in Mozilla, it doesn't.

As Boris says, the site assumes that the last element in a JavaScript
date is the year. This is true in NN4.7 and IE6, but not Mozilla.
Just try this HTML:

<script>
  var dt = Date().toString();
  document.write(dt);
</script>


NN4 --->  Mon Jan 06 23:16:02 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time) 2003
IE6 --->  Mon Jan 06 23:15:59 2003
Moz --->  Mon Jan 06 2003 23:15:56 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time)


That's what's causing the problem. The site should use the getFullYear()
method to get the year (NOTE: don't use the deprecated method getYear()).

Reassigning to Evangelism component -

Comment 5

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

common enough to get a short note written about it.

Comment 6

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

tech evang june 2003 reorg

Comment 7

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

contact info [e-mail]

Comment 8

[Cyrille VIVION]

[bug248549notfixed]

Comment 9

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

still broken

Comment 10

[Adam Stevenson [:adamopenweb]]

Page no longer exists, closing.