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Transitionend based transition loop breaks in Chrome

I have very basic promise based self-calling function that:
takes collection of divs with certain class
checks whether they have just been moved left or right
based on result makes choice to move (transform: translate) them
with classList.add() / classList.remove()
and on transitionend - calls itself
here is function:
function transitionTest(){
console.log('called --- transitionTest() ');
var dummies = document.getElementsByClassName('dummy'),
count = dummies.length;
if(window.cache==='right'){
var transitionCollection=0;
for(var i = 0; i < dummies.length; i++){
dummies[i].classList.remove('right');
dummies[i].addEventListener('transitionend', function(){
transitionCollection++;
if( transitionCollection === dummies.length ){
transitionTest();
}
});
}
window.cache='';
} else {
var transitionCollection=0;
for(var i = 0; i < dummies.length; i++){
dummies[i].classList.add('right');
dummies[i].addEventListener('transitionend', function(){
transitionCollection++;
if( transitionCollection === dummies.length ){
transitionTest();
}
});
}
window.cache='right';
}
and here is working fiddle
So, what is wrong?
Nothing, if you are accessing via modern browser but not latest versions
of Chrome on Windows
Nothing, if you are accessing via latest versions of Chrome on Windows but refrain from causing any mouse events such as mouseenter/leave, click, even window focus event (e.g. if you stand still)
If you do such, infinite left - right movement of dummy div will occasionally break, under unclear circumstances
What gets wrong:
Dummy div, which is moving left-right infinitely, on mouseenter, mouseleave, click, sometimes and sometimes not (exact conditions are unclear) will:
go to end CSS value without transition and resumes normal operation after a while
stop entirely and resumes normal operation after a while
slow down (!? yeah, I wish I was kidding ) and stop/go to end CSS value
These errors are occurring in Chrome 45 (Win 7) and, less intensively Chrome 42 (Win XP) - which are platforms that I was able to test by now. Just to note, upper code does not need to be cross browser, I'm fully aware of implications.

How to get all the HTML elements affected by an event

I have assigned a "mousemove" event on some div elements. Those elements might overlap each other due to an animation process, so several "mousemove" events could be called at once by moving the mouse over the overlapping parts.
The problem is that two triggered "mousemove" events can lead to conflicting decisions. Hence, I would like to make a decision based on ALL elements that are concerned by the "mousemove" event, when such an event occur for at least one of them.
My question is : do you know an efficient way to do it ?
Thanks !

If I understand the q correctly, you want to synchronize the execution of mousemove events for each div. There are hacky ways to do it, though the best would be to change your HTML markup, so you don't have overlaps.
Anyway, for your case, you could do the following:
var g_focusDivId = "";
function onMouseMove(e)
{
if (g_focusDivId != "" && g_focusDivId != e.target.id)
return; // Deciding to not exec any other mouse moves
g_focusDivId = e.target.id;
// Do your stuff
g_focusDivId = "";
}
This, of course, assumes that JS event handling is single-threaded, which is not always true: Is JavaScript guaranteed to be single-threaded?
The alternative is to do this (I have not tried this). I am using a queue to run the events in sequence on a single method. Much more controlled, but it may lead to some events getting processed late.
var g_syncEventQueue = new Array();
function onMouseEvent(e)
{
g_syncEventQueue.push(e);
}
function queueListenerProc()
{
if (g_syncEventQueue.size() > 0)
{
var evt = g_syncEventQueue[0];
g_syncEventQueue = g_syncEventQueue.splice(0, 1);
return queueListenerProc(); // Immediately process the next event
}
setTimeout("queueListenerProc()", 1000);
}
queueListenerProc(); // Not ideal because it keeps running without an exit condition.

Overlapping key events

I am working on a little HTML/JavaScript/CSS3 project for fun. I'm basically trying to make a wheel that rolls around in the browser window. To control the wheel I'm using keyup and keydown events for the cursor keys (left and right turn the wheel and up and down roll it forward or backward).
I've got it working pretty well so far, but there are two major glitches. Say I want to roll the wheel forward and without stopping I want to turn it a little to the right, then I would keep the up key pressed and press the right cursor key. When I do this there's a pause in the movement before it registers both events and keeps rolling.
That's one of the problems, the main problem is that, once I've performed the previous action and then wheel is at a desirable angle, if I let go of the right cursor key the browser registers both keys as released and the wheel comes to a stand still. Here is a jsFiddle of what it looks like: http://jsfiddle.net/UKqwu/1/. I know the code is a mess but it's a work in progress/learning experience and I've only been programming for a month or so.
Anyways thanks for any help. It only works in Chrome at the moment as far is I know. Haven't really been bothered fixing compatibility issues at this stage.

So, what is happening is essentially a limitation built in by your operating system, but there is a simple work-around. First I'll explain the limitation, and then the work-around.
If you were to (in a text box) hold down the "j" button, first one "j" would appear, and then after a short delay many "j"s would appear "jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj"
This is the same problem your experiencing. The event fires once, waits for a moment, and then fires many more times.
The solution, however is simple. Instead of having your wheel move when the events are fired... have it update constantly, and separately keep track of what keys are up or down.
The Key Handler would look something like this...
function KeyHandler() {
this.left = false;
this.right= false;
...
function onKeyDown(e) {
if (e.keyCode == 37) {
this.left = true;
}
...
}
function onKeyUp(e) {
if (e.keyCode == 37) {
this.left = false;
}
...
}
}
(you'd attach the key handler to the body or whatever element you wish)
Your wheel would have an update function that looked like...
wheel.update = function() {
// the wheel is turning left
if (wheel.keyhandler.left) {
// make the appropriate adjustments
}
}
and then the game would have something like this...
wheel = new Wheel;
setInterval(function() {
wheel.update();
},100);
That way your wheel will always be updating based on the current state of the keys, and you wont have to rely on the limitations of events that are firing. :)

Here's a snippet of a simple game I once wrote
//key codes
var KEY_LEFT = 37;
var KEY_RIGHT = 39;
var KEY_A = 65;
var KEY_D = 68;
var KEY_SPACE = 32;
var keys = {};
function onKeyDown(e)
{
e = e || window.event;
var key = window.event.keyCode || e.which; // ie
keys[key] = true;
}
function onKeyUp(e)
{
var key = window.event.keyCode || e.which; // ie
delete keys[key];
}
This keeps track of all current key states. Then your game "tick" is on a setTimeout() rather than moving on key events and checks for appropriate keys.
function gameTick()
{
// update paddle angles
if (keys[KEY_LEFT])
{
// move left
}
if (keys[KEY_RIGHT])
{
// move right
}
}
Here's the game;

the problem you are facing is because your code is meant to detect single key press while your game needs 2 key press detection.
put this line in loop over size of e. that will set all pressed keys as 1. currently its detecting only one key press and processing for one at a time.
keys[e.keyCode] = 1;
check out this thread and u might get what you need. though its jquery, it might help conceptually. m also working on this with js... if anything new comes up will share...
Detect multiple keys on single keypress event in jQuery
your code and concept is cool if you are really one month old in programming.

Can I query/detect the double click speed for a webpage user?

It's OS/user dependant. Not the browser, not the website, but the OS decides how fast and slow a double click must be.
I'd like to use that number in my app. Is there a way to get that number with JS?
Simple question. Might not be possible.
Thanks

Simple answer: no, sorry.
The best you could do would be something like this (example uses jQuery simply because it was quicker to write, the principle holds if jQuery is unavailable. Also note that this could well be simplified, this is just what came to mind first):
var timer,
num = 0;
$("#example").click(function() {
/*This condition is required because 2 click events are fired for each
dblclick but we only want to record the time of the first click*/
if(num % 2 === 0) {
timer = (new Date()).getTime();
}
num++;
}).dblclick(function() {
var time2 = (new Date()).getTime(),
dblClickTime = time2 - timer;
});
Unfortunately, that's probably not very helpful. You may be able to record the dblClickTime values and check for the longest, but that still is very unlikely to be the actual value you're after. That sort of thing is just not available through JavaScript.

Answer 2021 - as far as I know - still not. There is a reason: we should not care.
In principle dblclick is somehow obsolete …
We have the not well known detail property. Maybe because of the name.
From MDN:
The MouseEvent object passed into the event handler for click has its detail property set to the number of times the target was clicked. In other words, detail will be 2 for a double-click, 3 for triple-click, and so forth. This counter resets after a short interval without any clicks occurring; the specifics of how long that interval is may vary from browser to browser and across platforms. The interval is also likely to be affected by user preferences; for example, accessibility options may extend this interval to make it easier to perform multiple clicks with adaptive interfaces.
With detail ie. click_count it is possible to stop propagation of CLICK when detail != 1
So pseudcode:
if evt.detail==1
do_click()
if evt.detail==2
do_dblclick()
...
if evt.detail!=1
evt.stopPropagation()
If someone really needs to distinguish between click, double-click, triple-click, … like an 'XOR', they should really rethink the design.
The DblClickTime can be very long, that means the app feels like not responding, if the user just wants the click-action.
The other problem is, that it is possible, that users intention is a double-click, but is to slow - then there are two click-actions, they should not be to different to dblclick.

I'd like to use that number in my app. Is there a way to get that number with JS?
Definitely not - stuff like this is outside JavaScript's scope.
You may be able to find out values that work for a double click by asking the user to double-click, listen to the click events and see whether the dblclick event is fired - I'm nnot sure whether event handling works that way, though. But even if that works, it is still a long way from actually finding out the actual value.

This is my 2015 solution, would like to see a pure js version tho.
var start;
var click = null;
$(document).click(function() {
var now = performance.now();
start = click ? click : now;
click = now;
}).dblclick(function() {
alert(performance.now()-start)
});
EDIT
Pure JS
var start;
var click = null;
var getStart = function() {
var now = performance.now();
start = click ? click : now;
click = now;
}
var getStop = function() {
alert(performance.now()-start)
}
if (window.addEventListener) {
window.addEventListener('click', getStart , false);
} else {
window.attachEvent('onclick', function() {
return(getStart.call(window, window.event));
});
}
if (window.addEventListener) {
window.addEventListener('dblclick', getStop , false);
} else {
window.attachEvent('ondblclick', function() {
return(getStop.call(window, window.event));
});
}

Adding on to James Allardice's answer:
Depending on your implementation and where you are looking for double clicks you may want to also check the users mouse location (or I guess tap location). This is to avoid a double click firing when the user is clicking things on different parts of your page (again depends on your event listener implementation -- if it is just on one button for example this probably isn't an issue).
When a click event fires the event listener in my example below has two variables e.clientX and e.clientY. This will give you the location of the mouse. You might want to check to see if the user has moved their mouse significantly since the first click (adapt accordingly to your code).
document.addEventListener("click", function(e){ console.log("Mouse X: " + e.clientX + ": Mouse Y: " + e.clientY); });
You don't want to have it be too tight or else a user may never be able to fire a double click, and you don't want it to be too loose so that double clicks fire seemingly randomly for the user. Maybe start with a 25px or so box around the first click (again this depends on your application). This is something you can test and adjust based on your user interface.
I am assuming you don't have jQuery or aren't using it, because I believe jQuery might already do this calculation to fire dblclick

javascript race condition

I'm calling a javascript function that sets the opacity of an iframe an unknown amount of times in rapid succession. Basically this tweens the alpha from 0 to 100.
here is the code
function setAlpha(value)
{
iframe.style.opacity = value * .01;
iframe.style.filter = 'alpha(opacity =' + val + ')';
}
My problem is that for the first time it is working in ie (7) and not in firefox (3.02). in Firefox I get a delay and then the contentdocument appears with an opacity of 100. If I stick an alert in it works, so I'm guessing it is a race condition (although I thought javascript was single threaded) and that the setAlpha function is being called before the last function has finished executing.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. I've read the 'avoiding a javascript race condition post' but I think this qualifies as something different (plus I can't figure out how to apply that example to this one).

The issue is that most browsers don't repaint until there is a pause in the javascript execution.
This can be solved by using setTimeout, as others have suggested. However, I recommend using something like jQuery, or any of the javascript libraries to do animations. Running setTimeout 100 times is a bad idea because the length of the animation will vary based on the browser and speed of the user's computer. The correct way to do animations, is to specify how long they should last and check the system time to determine how far the animation should progress.
function fadeIn(elem,animation_length) {
var start = (new Date()).getTime();
var step = function() {
window.setTimeout(function() {
var pct = ((new Date()).getTime() - start)/animation_length;
elem.style.opacity = Math.min(pct,1);
if (pct < 1)
step();
},20);
};
step();
}
[edit:] The code above is only to illustrate how to do animations based on the system clock instead of simple intervals. Please use a library to do animations. The code above will not work on IE, because IE uses "filter:opacity(xx)" instead of "opacity". Libraries will take care of this for you and also provide nice features such as completion events, and the ability to cancel the animation.

Javascript doesn't run across multiple threads so you're safe from race conditions (ignoring upcoming Worker thread support in Safari and Firefox :D ).
Simple question, how are you calling setAlpha multiple times, firefox, safari and opera all coalesce style sheet updates -- eg. they won't repaint or even recalc style info while js is running unless they have to. So they will only paint if JS has completed.
So if you're doing
while(...) setAlpha(...)
they won't update, you'll probably need to use setTimeout to trigger multiple distinct calls to update the style.
An alternative would be to use a library such as jQuery, mootools,etc that i vaguely recall provide a simplified mechanism to do these types of animations and transitions. As an added bonus i believe at least a few libraries will also use webkit transition and animation css rules when available (eg. Safari, and i think the latest firefox builds)
[edit: caveat: i haen't actually used any of these libraries, i only read about what they're supposed to do. My sites render the same in lynx as any other browser because i couldn't design my way out of a paper bag :D ]

Are you using setTimeout or a tight loop? If you're using just a loop to call the function, then switch to using setTimout.
example:
function setAlpha(value)
{
iframe.style.opacity = value * .01;
iframe.style.filter = 'alpha(opacity =' + val + ')';
if(value < 100 ) {
setTimeout(function () {setAlpha(value+1)},20);
}
}
setAlpha(0);
Because you see, it's not just javascript that's single threaded. It's the whole damn browser. If your javascript goes into a tightloop, you hang the whole browser. So the browser pauses waiting for javascript to finish, and doesn't even have a chance to update the screen, while your code is rapidly changing some dom values.

Some browsers are smart enough to delay changes to the DOM until the call stack is empty.
This is a generally a smart thing to do. For example, if you call a function that changes an element to yellow, and immediately call a function that changes the same element back to it's original state, the browser shouldn't waste time making the change, since it should happen so quickly as to be imperceptible to a user.
The setTimeout(func, 0) trick is commonly used to force Javascript to delay execution of func until the call stack is empty.
In code:
function setAlpha(opacity){
some_element.style.opacity = opacity;
}
/**
* This WON'T work, because the browsers won't bother reflecting the
* changes to the element's opacity until the call stack is empty,
* which can't happen until fadeOut() returns (at the earliest)
**/
function fadeOut(){
for (var i=0; i<10; i++){
setAlpha(0.1*i);
}
}
/**
* This works, because the call stack will be empty between calls
* to setAlpha()
**/
function fadeOut2(){
var opacity = 1;
setTimeout(function setAlphaStep(){
setAlpha(opacity);
if (opacity > 0){
setTimeout(setAlphaStep, 10);
}
opacity -= 0.1;
}, 0);
}
All this boils down to being a wonderful excuse to use one of many javascript libraries that handle this tricky stuff for you.
Edit: and here's a good article on the tricky Javascript call stack