You can use almost any English textual description of the date, in layman's terms, this means the following would be acceptable.

1st Jan 09
1 Jan 2009
1/1/09

If you don't type a part of the date it will use parts from the current date, so if you type in 1st jan then it will use the current year, or if you type in 2009 it will goto todays date in todays month in 2009.

The following are also acceptable
Tomorrow
Today
Next Week
Next Friday
+5 weeks

Let us know in the forums if you are encountering any problems with this function.

If you understand PHP code, then this uses the 'strtotime' function, the script automatically detects if you have typed in 30-01-2009 and switches it to the American format. Depending on the version of PHP we are running will depend on the different options available.