Page safety of setInterval - javascript

I have a piece of text that uses Webkit's background-clip:text feature and for pure aesthetics purposes, I want to include a script to scroll through the image on the text. The one way I have thought of doing this is using setInterval and running the function I have included below. I want to know if I will run into any problems of using setInterval since I have it looping at 50ms.
Function:
function movePos(){
var obj = document.querySelector('h1 span');
var pos = parseInt(obj.style.backgroundPositionY);
obj.style.backgroundPositionY = (pos + 1) + 'px';
}

Any modern browser with even modest hardware should be able to handle executing these three lines of code 20 times per second. You should be fine.
If you want to optimize, and the obj variable won't change, you could cache that value so you're not running a selector 20 times per second. I'm not certain, but this is probably the most CPU intensive of the three lines of code.

Related

Moving elements with javascript

What are the best practices for moving elements with javascript?
Do you use timeouts or intervals?
Is it bad to have timed events for 10 milliseconds, or will it be precise?
Do you move pixel by pixel, or a certain fraction of the total distance?
If you use intervals, how do you stop the interval when the element is in position?
The last two times I've seen motion in javascript have been with jQuery and Raphael.js, neither of which I can understand the source code of. Are there some good tutorials or code examples anywhere? Is there a simple explanation of the methods jQuery uses?
There is a recent function called requestAnimationFrame which runs a function as soon as possible. This is a good practice since it has been made for animation purposes.
The way it works in terms of coding is the same as setTimeout, e.g. when the function finishes you call requestAnimationFrame.
In the function, you fetch the current time to see how the object should be positioned at that time.
You can cancel a pending function it with cancelRequestAnimationFrame, passing the return value of requestAnimationFrame.
Currently this is not cross-browser and the functions are vendor-prefixed, e.g. webkitRequestAnimationFrame for Chrome.
E.g.: http://jsfiddle.net/pimvdb/G2ThU/1/.
var div = document.getElementById('div');
var animation;
function move() {
var time = Math.round((new Date()).getTime() / 10) % 200;
div.style.left = time + 'px';
animation = requestAnimationFrame(move);
}
document.getElementById("start").onclick = function() {
animation = requestAnimationFrame(move);
}
document.getElementById("stop").onclick = function() {
cancelRequestAnimationFrame(animation);
}
Here you can find a good Javascript Animation tutorial:
http://www.schillmania.com/content/projects/javascript-animation-1
But what you said is right. Jquery Animate uses setTimeout, moving the object based in calculations of duration, position and easing.
Intervals are preferable, I believe, because you only set it once in the code rather than once per frame. It only needs to read the code once and reuse it several times, rather than reading it every time it is created.
10ms is a bit short. The computer can natively support intervals of about 16ms, then more precise timers can be used for faster intervals, however these are very power-consuming. IE9 supports both, depending on the computer's power settings, but ideally you shouldn't need anything faster than 50ms (20 FPS).
I like to move a fraction of the total distance, based on the time that has passed since the animation started. This way, no matter what the speed of the computer and browser, the animation will always take the exact same amount of time. Guaranteed.
Something like:
interval = setInterval(function() {
// do stuff
if( /*animation ended*/) clearInterval(interval);
},time);
jQuery is easy for some, but personally I find nothing beats writing it yourself in plain, old JS. Much easier to understand what's going on exactly, rather than relying on some framework to get it right for you.

Javascript setinterval() lag in Firefox?

I have wrote this code to make seconds (with decisec & centisec) counting up.
You've wasted time <span id="alltime">0.00</span> seconds.
<script type="text/javascript">
function zeroPad(num,count)
{
var numZeropad = num + '';
while(numZeropad.length < count) { numZeropad = "0" + numZeropad; }
return numZeropad; }
function counttwo() {
tall = document.getElementById('alltime').innerHTML;
if(parseFloat(tall) < 1.00) { tnew2 = tall.replace('0.0','').replace('0.',''); }
else { tnew2 = tall.replace('.',''); }
tnum = parseInt(tnew2) + 1;
//check if have to add zero
if(tnum >= 100) { tstr1 = tnum + ''; }
else { tstr1 = zeroPad(tnum,3); }
tlast = tstr1.substr(0,tstr1.length - 2) + '.' + tstr1.substr(tstr1.length - 2);
document.getElementById("alltime").innerHTML = tlast;
}
var inttwo=setInterval("counttwo()",10);
</script>
In HTML document and run.
It works well but when I use Firefox 4 and run the code. Seems like it LAG a bit (stop a bit before counting up) when it's on some numbers (randomly like 12.20, 4.43). I've tried change "counttwo()" to counttwo but that doesn't help.
I have told some of my friends to run on Firefox 4 too. They said it doesn't lag at all. This cause because of my computer ? or My Firefox ? or something else ?
Thanks in advance!
PS. Fiddle here: http://jsfiddle.net/XvkGy/5/ Mirror: http://bit.ly/hjVtXS
When you use setInterval or setTimeout the time interval is not exact for several reasons. It is dependent on other javascript running, the browser, the processor etc. You have to take a reliability of +- 15ms for granted afaik. See also ...
That's a lot of counting, so on some computer, yes, it might lag (if it's a prehistoric one or the user's got his processor really busy with something), also if I'm right, that thing won't work with Chrome's V8, since that script would freeze if you switched tabs, and resume executing only when you return to that tab.
If you're just seeing pauses every so often, you're probably seeing garbage collection or cycle collection pauses.
You can test this by toggling your javascript.options.mem.log preference to true in about:config and then watching the error console's "Messages" tab as your script runs. If the GC/CC messages are correlated with your pauses, then they're the explanation for what you see.
As for why you see it but others don't... do you see the problem if you disable all your extensions?
The problem with setInterval is that it can eventually lead to a back-up. This happens because the JavaScript engine tries to execute the function on the interval (in your case, 10ms), but if ever that execution takes longer than 10ms, the JS engine starts trying to execute the next interval before the current one stops (which really just means it queues it up to run as soon as the previous callback finishes).
Since JavaScript executes single-threaded (with the exception of web workers in HTML 5), this can lead to pauses in your UI or DOM updates because it is continuously processing JavaScript callbacks from your setInterval. In worst case scenarios, the whole page can become permanently unresponsive because your stack of uncompleted setInterval executions gets longer and longer, never fully finishing.
With a few exceptions, it is generally considered a safer bet to use setTimeout (and invoking the setTimeout again after execution of the callback) instead of setInterval. With setTimeout, you can ensure that one and only one timeout is ever queued up. And since the timers are only approximate anyway (just because you specify 10ms doesn't mean it will happen at exactly 10ms), you don't typically gain anything from using setInterval over setTimeout.
An example using setTimeout:
var count = function(){
// do something
// queue up execution once again
setTimeout(count, 10);
};
count();
One reason why you may see pauses on some browsers, and not others, is because not all JavaScript engines are created equal :). Some are faster than others, and as such, less likely to end up with a setInterval backup.
Different browsers use different JavaScript engines, so it's possible that this code just finds a spot where Firefox's JägerMonkey scripting engine has some problems. There doesn't seem to be any obvious inefficiencies in the counting itself..
If it's working on your friends' installs of FF4, then it's probably just an isolated problem for you, and there isn't much you'll be able to do by changing the code.

Is there some way to "nice" my JavaScript execution?

I'd like to run some calculations in a browser window, but I don't want it to slow the client computer down for user interaction, especially for single core machines. Is there some way to adjust the nice level of my executing JavaScript so that it will execute as fast as possible without detracting from the responsiveness of the machine?
I can't think of anything else than delaying execution of your calculations. In example, dividing all work into small pieces and then running them sequentially with some delay (using setTimeout or setInterval) between each task.
Create open loops... an example
This is a close loop
for( i = 0 ; i < 10000 ; i++)
{
doSomeMath(i);
}
This is an open loop
i = 0;
iMax = 10000
var MyWorkingThread =
setInterval(function()
{
if( i < iMax)
{
doSomeMath(i);
i++;
}
else
{
clearInterval(MyWorkingThread);
}
},1);
You can make a more, or a less work inside the open loop, but this is the general idea. I have made this many times for similar issues and I left the browser work very smooth.
For speed attempt to use a single multidimensional array to contain your data and then at the end of your function use a single join to convert that array to a string for output and output that data using the innerHTML method. That is the fastest possible method of containing and serving data in JavaScript. Definitely do not use DOM methods or elements to output your data as that is about 4 times as slow.
Output your data as few times as possible. This is going to be determined upon which event you use to execute your function. I recommend not using the onload event as this will slow the initial load time of your page. I would recommend using the onclick function associated with a button, because then the user is aware that they caused the execution that is slowing down your page.
I did some testing, and the browser needs quite some time between bursts of work to be reasonably responsive:
function work(cnt) {
// do some heavy work
for (var i=0;i<100000000;i++) ;
// start next work
if (cnt > 0) {
window.setTimeout(function(){work(cnt-1);},200);
}
}
run the calculation on the server with an ajax request
open a new window or frame and run the code there
run the code in a loop broken into intervals
be ready to use web-worker processes (html5 asynchronous script)

Improving Efficiency in jQuery function

The while statement in this function runs too slow (prevents page load for 4-5 seconds) in IE/firefox, but fast in safari...
It's measuring pixel width of text on a page and truncating until text reaches ideal width:
function constrain(text, ideal_width){
$('.temp_item').html(text);
var item_width = $('span.temp_item').width();
var ideal = parseInt(ideal_width);
var smaller_text = text;
var original = text.length;
while (item_width > ideal) {
smaller_text = smaller_text.substr(0, (smaller_text.length-1));
$('.temp_item').html(smaller_text);
item_width = $('span.temp_item').width();
}
var final_length = smaller_text.length;
if (final_length != original) {
return (smaller_text + '…');
} else {
return text;
}
}
Any way to improve performance? How would I convert this to a bubble-sort function?
Thanks!
move the calls to $() outside of the loop, and store its result in a temporary variable. Running that function is going to be the slowest thing in your code, aside from the call to .html().
They work very very hard on making the selector engines in libraries fast, but it's still dog slow compared to normal javascript operations (like looking up a variable in the local scope) because it has to interact with the dom. Especially if you're using a class selector like that, jquery has to loop through basically every element in the document looking at each class attribute and running a regex on it. Every go round the loop! Get as much of that stuff out of your tight loops as you can. Webkit runs it fast because it has .getElementsByClassName while the other browsers don't. (yet).
Instead of removing one character at time until you find the ideal width, you could use a binary search.
I see that the problem is that you are constantly modifying the DOM in the loop, by setting the html of the temp_item, and then re reading the width.
I don't know the context of your problem, but trying to adjust the layout by measuring the rendered elements is not a good practice from my point of view.
Maybe you could approach the problem from a different angle. Truncating to a fixed width is common.
Other possibility (hack?) if dont have choices, could be to use the overflow css property of the container element and put the … in other element next to the text. Though i recommend you to rethink the need of solving the problem the way you are intending.
Hugo
Other than the suggestion by Breton, another possibility to speed up your algorithm would be to use a binary search on the text length. Currently you are decrementing the length by one character at a time - this is O(N) in the length of the string. Instead, use a search which will be O(log(N)).
Roughly speaking, something like this:
function constrain(text, ideal_width){
...
var temp_item = $('.temp_item');
var span_temp_item = $('span.temp_item');
var text_len_lower = 0;
var text_len_higher = smaller_text.length;
while (true) {
if (item_width > ideal)
{
// make smaller to the mean of "lower" and this
text_len_higher = smaller_text.length;
smaller_text = text.substr(0,
((smaller_text.length + text_len_lower)/2));
}
else
{
if (smaller_text.length>=text_len_higher) break;
// make larger to the mean of "higher" and this
text_len_lower = smaller_text.length;
smaller_text = text.substr(0,
((smaller_text.length + text_len_higher)/2));
}
temp_item.html(smaller_text);
item_width = span_temp_item.width();
}
...
}
One thing to note is that each time you add something to the DOM, or change the html in a node, the page has to redraw itself, which is an expensive operation. Moving any HTML updates outside of a loop might help speed things up quite a bit.
As other have mentioned, you could move the calls to $() to outside the loop. You can create a reference to the element, then just call the methods on it within the loop as 1800 INFORMATION mentioned.
If you use Firefox with the Firebug plugin, there's a great way of profiling the code to see what's taking the longest time. Just click profile under the first tab, do your action, then click profile again. It'll show a table with the time it took for each part of your code. Chances are you'll see a lot of things in the list that are in your js framework library; but you can isolate that as well with a little trial and error.

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

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