How to pause javascript execution during rollover? - javascript

I'm looking for a way to capture HTML of objects that are rendered on rollover. An example would be:
Mouse over object to get popup
Press button or key to pause js (to prevent mouse out trigger)
Right click and inspect element to get HTML
Does anyone know of a way to do this?

To your main question, there are two ways to pause the execution of a Javascript thread:
Hit a breakpoint in a debugger
Insert an alert() into the javascript thread and when it fires, it will suspend the execution of that javascript thread until the alert dialog is dismissed.
You haven't described the environment you're operating in and what types of modifications you can or can't make to the host page for us to advise more specifically.
To approach the problem differently, to capture some dynamically inserted HTML there are other strategies. For example, you can use your own javascript (like a bookmarklet) to attach an event handler to the mouse over. You can then set a timer that will watch for when the dynamically generated HTML seems to be present and grab a copy of it. Keep in mind that javascript is single threaded so your own timer will only run when the other javascript thread is waiting for user input, but if the general model is that it pops something up on mouseover and then waits for additional mouse events, then this could work.

yes, <object onmouseover="functionPopup();" onmouseout="functionWrap();">
then place your onkeyup-event to detect the button/key.
The trick is to leave the functionWrap on the object ALONE!!! and OVERWRITE this function functionWrap() (that is referenced by object's onmouseout) with the updated instructions (this works pretty good crossbrowser -even older ones-, since this uses the traditional event model :P ).
Happy tweaking!!

Related

How Javascript control events

Let's say I have a simple code using onmouseover event
<div onmousemove="myMoveFunction()">
<p id="demo">I will demonstrate onmousemove!</p>
</div>
(from w3school)
I want to ask that, how does Javascript know mouse is on that div? Or when we use onclick, how does Js know button has been clicked. Is there automatic event listeners? or Is there any cycle controlling changes for events continually in the background?
Please help me I'm confused.
Any links to read would be okay too
A browser is responsible for gathering events as they appear on the page. When there's an event listener added for a given action, the listener's callback is added to the event loop. Event loop is an infinite loop that constantly checks if there's something to do (in a cpu optimized manner). On event loop there are two main tasks:
rendering the page if there's a change in DOM or CSSOM
executing callbacks when some specific action happens
It is important to know that javascript is single threaded, meaning if there's a long running callback, the browser won't be able to rerender the page so the page just freezes.
Another way to understand what's happening under the hood is to open chrome dev tools and go to performance panel. You can find there exactly what happens when you interact with the page:
There are a few ways to add an event listener:
in html using on[eventname]=action, i.e. <div onmousemove="myMoveFunction()">
in javascript by assigning a function to on[eventname] property, i.e. windows.onload = () => alert("hello");
in javascript by using addEventListener() method, i.e. element.addEventListener("click", () => alert("hello"));
If you want to know more about event loop, here are good resources:
Philip Roberts: What the heck is the event loop anyway?
Jake Archibald on ‘The Event Loop’ (more advanced)
There's also pretty good and free course that explains a lot about how browser works and most importantly shows you how to improve site's performance:
Browser Rendering Optimization
When you use e.g. <div onmousemove="myMoveFunction()">, as the browser reads the DOM on page load, behind the scenes it generates code for the event listener and there is not much else to it.

check document if there is mouse moving or touching like screensaver

as the title says, i would like to know if theres any possibility in javascript (jquery) to check if there is any action in the document, and if not. something like a screensaver should pop up!
if someone is on the page and looks here, looks there and after a while he doesnt do anything, the mouse (or touch finger) stands still, i want to say the document after a minute without activity...
function noactivity() { //after 60000ms start something here }
i want that global for the whole document!
thanks ted
It can be done relatively simply in jquery using:
setTimeout();
http://jsfiddle.net/bernie1227/hNkTy/1/
I had this issue a while back while I was working on an iframe resizing issue. What I wanted was to tell the parent page whenever there is a change in height of the document.
What I found was that jQuery does not give such facility directly. The main reason for this is that there are too many activities happening to DOM which are not visible, when you are watching it (bind). You could however watch for a specific property like mouse moving on a document.
$(document).mousemove(function(e){
console.log(e.pageY);
console.log(e.pageX);
});
But then again that does not at all mean that the user is interacting with your page. That merely signifies that the user is on your page and his mouse is moving. The user might also be not moving the mouse and merely using his keyboard to interact with your page. So now you would have to watch for keyboard interaction aswell.
$(document).keyup(function(e){
console.log('active');
});
Using these you could create a countdown function which checks for a flag after a set interval of time. You could set the flag if user makes an activity. And after a set amount of time that function the 'noactivity()' function id the flag has not been set.
Another approach to watching the document activity could be you watching the DOM subtree being modified.
jQuery(document).bind('DOMSubtreeModified', function() {
console.log('active');
});
This works for Chrome/FireFox/IE8+ but not on Opera (any version). The main reason being that the operation is too heavy on your browser's resources. And I would discourage using this approach because listening for DOM mutation events may harm performance and the relevant W3C working groups are trying to find a better way to do this and deprecate DOM mutation events for this reason - it's hard or impossible to make a good and performant implementation.
I am not saying that the other options that I mentioned above are good either. They are also expensive operations if you are watching document and should be avoided. Another issue with those options is that the iframe content is not particularly the part of your document and these options will not work if user is interacting with iframe content.
So the conclusion is that W3C did not yet finalize a cheap way where user can watch changes in document subtree.

jQuery & Chrome - Finding Button Hooks

Using Chrome's developer tools I am trying to determine what jQuery function is hooking an input button on the page for debugging purposes. I usually just keep searching until I find it, but I figured I'd ask this time.
Is there a way to find a jQuery button hook for a specific button in Chrome? I've tried looking through the Event Listener Breakpoints, but can never seem to find the right thing to pause it.
Basically, I need to know what jQuery / Javascript is being executed after the button is clicked.
The hooks are implemented in the application like so:
$('.button_class').click(function (){
$('#button_id').click(function(){
etc...
try this :
$(yourbutton).data('events');
Depending on the number of events/timers on the page this doesn't always work. But you can try "pausing" before clicking the button you want to debug in the JavaScript debug window. That way the debugger will pause on the next line that executes. The thing that occasionally prevents you from using that is if there is a "hover" or mouse move/in/out event tied on an element you have to pass over to get to the button (including the button itself). In that case I just remove those events (if I can) until I get the one I want. The event listener breakpoints would be more ideal but they're sometimes difficult when using jQuery or another library, I've actually put in a feature request to the Chrome Dev Tools team to address this very issue. (allowing you to specify what files are "yours" and only "breaking" in those specific files)
good luck -ck

Is there a way to see what Javascript functions (the name of the functions) execute in real time in Chrome's Inspector?

For example, pretend there is Javascript code that will execute someFunction() when a button is clicked and I click that button. I wonder if there is some way to see that someFunction() was just executed. Is there a way to see what functions are executed in Chrome in real time?
If it is the Profiles tab in the inspector that does the trick, how exactly do you tell what functions fire in real time with that?
EDIT 1/21/2012 12:36p Pacific: From Brian Nickel's comment below, the Timeline tab in the Inspector is the way to see what happens in realtime, but how do you see the names of executed functions in the Timeline?
The Timeline and Scripts developer tool can be used to accomplish this goal.
Open the developer tools panel and press Record under Timeline to begin tracking activity.
Trigger the event you are interested in (i.e., in your example, click on the button), then stop recording (or continue to record, but be cogniscent of the amount of data you are collecting).
Note the entires logged in the Timeline panel. Find the relevant event, and click the twistie arrow to the left of the timing bar for that event. This will expose the function calls associated with that event.
Click on link to the right of the function calls to see the relevant JavaScript. (You ask for a function name, but keep in mind that the event may be associated with an anonymous function, so there isn't always a name available.)
If you want to step through the event handler itself, insert a breakpoint at the line after the handler's declaration (presuming the event handler declaration is greater than one line). Alternatively, expand the Event Listener Breakpoints in the Scripts panel and check off the appropriate event type (as listed in the Timeline panel for the relevant event). Note that this approach will break on every instance of that event, instead of the sole invocation you are interested in.
If you are running into trouble with minified JavaScript and inserting breakpoints (because each line is so long), here's a tip: open the minified script file in the Scripts panel via the dropdown, then click on {}. This will enable Pretty Print, expanding the minified code into something more readable by adding whitespace. This allows you to insert breakpoints more granularity. Note that if you now return to the Timeline panel, script references (e.g., jquery.min.js:3) now use the pretty-printed line numbers, not the minified, whitespaceless ones.
There are a lot of good utilities you can use: console.trace();, debugger, etc.

Hold execution of script

just wanted to know if it is programatically possible to halt the execution of script the same way javascript function "confirm" does. "confirm" stops further execution of script until user input, i want to acheieve same thing for BlockUI plugin of Jquery.
No, you cannot.
confirm, like the alert function, is a modal dialog, which is nothing more than a child window that requires users to interact with it before they can return to operating the parent application, thus preventing the workflow on the application main window.
Javascript has no sleep-ing mechanism. If you want to stop the execution of a script... it's only possible by executing another script that is memory/CPU expensive (such as an infinite loop) that will freeze the browser (thus stopping the targeted script from executing), but that kind of defeats the purpose.
If you know what you want to do, you can organize your code in such a manner that you can simulate the sleep process.
A good way of doing that is using callbacks combined with timeouts:
function f1(callback){
// do some stuff
// decide how much you want to wait
setTimeout(callback,how_much_you_want_to_wait);
}
I don't think its possible... the best you can do is,
show an overlay div which prevents any other user interactions on page
show your html popup in front of the overlay
in the code, use callbacks or 'jquery binders' or 'event listers' to execute the rest of the code
A rough example could be,
function showDialog(fn){
$('#overlay').show()
$('#dialog').show().click(fn); // ideally bind the click to the close button of the dialog
}
now, to show the dialog,
// code before the dial
showDialog(function(){
// execute rest of the code
})
Javascript has no sleep function that may be available in other languages. The best you can do is a setTimeout.
You could possibly do while true style loop but that will just spike CPU usage which is usually not encouraged.

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