Note that this does requite jQuery 1.5+.
$.ajaxSetup({
// Add a custom converter to convert ASP.NET JSON dates to JS Date object
// That is convert { "\/Date(...)\/" } to { new Date(...) }
converters: {
"text json": function( textValue ) {
return jQuery.parseJSON(textValue.replace(/"\\\/Date\((-?\d*)\)\\\/"/g, "new Date($1)"));
}
}
});