title: Javascript: parse a string to Date as LOCAL time zone
body: <p>I have a string representing the current time: <code>2015-11-24T19:40:00</code>. How do I parse this string in Javascript to get a Date represented by this string as the <strong>LOCAL TIME</strong>?  <strong>Due to some restriction, I cannot use the library <code>moment</code>, but jquery is allowed. I know that someone has asked this question before, but the answer used <code>moment</code></strong></p>
  
  <p>For example, if I run the script in California, then this string would represent 7PM pacific time, but if I run the script in NY then this string would represent Eastern Time?</p>
  
  <p>I tried the following but Chrome and Firefox give me different results:</p>
  
  <pre><code>var str = "2015-11-24T19:40:00";
  var date = new Date(str);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Chrome consumes it as <strong>UTC</strong> time (<code>Tue Nov 24 2015 11:40:00 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time)</code>), </p>
  
  <p>but Firefox consumes it as my local <strong>PACIFIC</strong> time (<code>Tue Nov 24 2015 19:40:00 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time)</code>)</p>
  
  <p>I tried adding "Z" to <code>str</code>, like this <code>var date = new Date(str+"Z");</code>, then both browsers give me UTC time. Is there any similar letter to <code>"Z"</code> which tells all browsers (at least chrome, Firefox and Safari) to parse the string as local time zone?</p>