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I have written this script: StackExchange sites - convert dates to local timezone .
It applies to Stack Exchange sites, e.g. : stackoverflow.com, stackexchange.com, superuser.com, etc.

The timezone that the Stack Exchange sites use is UTC i.e. +0000.
So, this script converts the dates to your local timezone, in both:

  • tooltips 2015-12-14 14:11:13Z, and in
  • date text like Dec 14 '15 at 14:11 or Dec 14 '15 at 14:11. superuser.com

It also recalculates them whenever the page changes via MutationObserver.


Known issue:

  1. While you are on the superuser.com homepage, every 1 minute the activity indicator which will show when new posts are asked or answered.
    Also, every relative timestamp, e.g. answered 1 min ago will become answered 2 min ago, and so on.

    Well, while using the script, the latter feature, i.e. "the relative timestamps being increased every 1 min" becomes broken, and they don't get updated anymore.


The script modifies the values as follows (in my case, for timezone EEST, +0200):

  • tooltip: 2015-12-14 14:11:13Z --> 2015-12-14 16:11:13
  • date text Dec 14 '15 at 14:11 --> Dec 14 '15 at 16:11

If I try to add a Z to the modified tooltips, i.e. modify the line 65 to:

dates[i].title = toTimeZone(temp, localTimezone) + 'Z';

therefore the text in the above case to become 2015-12-14 16:11:13Z
then the page hangs (the MutationObserver constantly sees mutations ).

The other approach I tried, was (instead of modifying all tooltips+texts on page),
to attach an event listener on each, to be activated on onmouseover and be restored on onmouseaway, but I found it very difficult to implement.



It uses the jsTimezoneDetect script (for getting the local timezone),
and Moment.js and Moment-Timezone JavaScript libraries (for converting the dates).
Also note: jsTimezoneDetect does not do geo-location, nor does it care very much about historical time zones, e.g. it may get "Europe/Berlin" when the user is in fact in "Europe/Stockholm" (they are both identical in modern time).

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