Help with JavaScript coding

[ilox]

I'm in the middle of a web design course and the current assignment is about using JavaScript to verify entries on an order form. I have pretty well all the work done but am having trouble on a couple of areas.
First one is this script given to us in the tutorial to demonstrate a simple script.

<script language="JavaScript" >
 currentDate=new Date(); 
with (currentDate){document.write( getDate() +"/" + getMonth()
 + "/" + getYear())}
</script>

I need to provide a page which has this date component in it but the darn thing is giving the wrong month! When I run it I get the month as 8 instead of 9. My computer is running at the correct date (I just double checked) so why is this thing showing August?

Second problem is a page that brings up a Help page when a button is pushed. This runs under a set of frames (blech!) so the code for this is

 function openHelp() {
    parent.frames[1].location.href="joeshelp.html";
   }

 <input type="button" value="Click to open the Help page"
  onclick="openHelp(event);">

What I was hoping to do was set it up so the help page could be opened whether the order form was in the frames or running on its own.

Anybody able to give me some clues or point me in the right direction about this stuff?