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The Date object handles daylight saving time differently depending on the operating system and the Flash Player version.

Flash Player 6 handles daylight saving time on the following operating systems in these ways:

Windows—the Date object automatically adjusts its output for daylight saving time. The Date object detects whether daylight saving time is employed in the current locale, and if so, it detects what the standard-to-daylight-saving-time transition date and times are. However, the transition dates currently in effect are applied to dates in the past and the future, so the daylight saving time bias may be calculated incorrectly for dates in the past when the locale had different transition dates.

Mac OS 8 and 9—the Date object uses the current daylight-saving-time bias, regardless of the date or time being calculated. For example, in the U.S. Pacific time zone during August, when daylight saving time (DST) is in effect, a Date object containing the date Jan 1 2001 still reports DST time even though DST isn't in effect during January. This problem cannot be remedied on Mac OS 8 or 9 because a time zone information database is not available.

Mac OS X—the Date object automatically adjusts its output for daylight saving time. The timezone information database in Mac OS X is used to determine whether any date or time in the present or past should have a daylight-saving-time bias applied.

Flash Player 5 handles daylight saving time on the following operating systems as follows:
Mac OS 8 and 9—the behavior is the same as described for Flash Player 6.

Windows—the U.S. rules for daylight saving time are always applied, which leads to incorrect transitions in Europe and other areas that employ daylight saving time but have different transition times than the U.S. Flash correctly detects whether DST is employed in the current locale.