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JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, Fourth Edition
book

JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, Fourth Edition

by David Flanagan
November 2001
Intermediate to advanced
936 pages
68h 43m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, Fourth Edition

Timeouts and Intervals

The setTimeout( ) method of the Window object schedules a piece of JavaScript code to be run at some specified time in the future. The clearTimeout( ) method can be used to cancel the execution of that code. setTimeout( ) is commonly used to perform animations or other kinds of repetitive actions. If a function runs and then uses setTimeout( ) to schedule itself to be called again, we get a process that repeats without any user intervention. JavaScript 1.2 has added the setInterval( ) and clearInterval( ) methods, which are like setTimeout( ) and clearTimeout( ), except that they automatically reschedule the code to run repeatedly; there is no need for the code to reschedule itself.

The setTimeout( ) method is commonly used in conjunction with the status or defaultStatus properties to animate some kind of message in the status bar of the browser. In general, animations involving the status bar are gaudy, and you should shun them! There are, however, a few status-bar animation techniques that can be useful and in good taste. Example 13-2 shows such a tasteful status-bar animation. It displays the current time in the status bar and updates that time once a minute. Because the update occurs only once a minute, this animation does not produce a constant flickering distraction at the bottom of the browser window, like so many others do.

Note the use of the onload event handler of the <body> tag to perform the first call to the display_time_in_status_line( ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596000480Catalog PageErrata