Countdown timer, timezone offset stuck in Eastern time

programming flash
1

I have a countdown timer that will be used for events that happen locally central time, mountain time, etc. However, if someone on eastern or pacific time (or any variation of the 4 timezones) looks at the countdown timer, I want to make sure that it shows the time relative to their timezone.

I thought i could read the user’s timezone offset (Date.getTimezoneOffset) and subtract from it the hardcoded timezone offset of the event (passed as a variable from XML depending on the event’s “primary” timezone).

Am I getting the math here wrong? The “net” timezone offset from the user - the event timezone offsets SHOULD add into the countdown time.

However, Date.getTimezoneOffset, regardless of my Mac or PC timezone setting/time, keeps showing an Eastern timezone offset of 5 hours. What’s going on?

The time is correct when I hardcode an event timezone offset to anything other than Eastern time. I think the problem is that it’s not getting a user timezone offset OTHER than -5 hours for Eastern Time.

Code for the timer is here (assume that the target event timezone has been passed in):

this.onEnterFrame = function() {
        var today:Date = new Date();
        var currentYear = today.getFullYear();
        var currentTime = today.getTime();
        var currentOffset = today.getTimezoneOffset() * 60 * 1000;
        
        var targetDate:Date = new Date(countTimeYear,countTimeMonth,countTimeDate,countTimeHour,countTimeMinute);
        var targetTime = targetDate.getTime();
        var targetOffset:Number;
        switch(countTimeZone) {
            case "eastern" :
            targetOffset = 5;
            break;
            
            case "central" :
            targetOffset = 6;
            break;
            
            case "mountain" :
            targetOffset = 7;
            break;
            
            case "pacific" :
            targetOffset = 8;
            break;
            
            default :
            targetOffset = 5;
            break;
        }
        targetOffset = targetOffset * 60 * 60 * 1000;
        var totalOffset = targetOffset - currentOffset;
        var timeLeft = targetTime - currentTime + totalOffset;
        
        var millisec = Math.floor(timeLeft);
        var seconds = Math.floor(timeLeft/1000);
        var minutes = Math.floor(seconds/60);
        var hours = Math.floor(minutes/60);
        var days = Math.floor(hours/24);
        
        millisec = String(millisec % 10);
        
        seconds = String(seconds % 60);
        if (seconds.length < 2) {
            seconds = "0" + seconds;
        }
        
        minutes = String(minutes % 60);
        if (minutes.length < 2) {
            minutes = "0" + minutes;
        }
        
        hours = String(hours % 24);
        if (hours.length < 2) {
            hours = "0" + hours;
        }
        
        days = String(days);
        if (days.length == 1) {
            days = "000" + days;
        } else if (days.length == 2) {
            days = "00" + days;
        } else if (days.length == 3) {
            days = "0" + days;            
        }
        
        if (timeLeft > 0) {
            countdownTime = days + ":" + hours + ":" + minutes + ":" + seconds + "." + millisec;
        } else {
            countdownTime = "0000:00:00:00.0";
        }
        
        this.countdown_text.text = countdownTime;
    }

Thoughts? Suggestions?

IronChefMorimoto