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Something that has always bugged me is how unpredictable the setTimeout() method in Javascript is.
In my experience, the timer is horribly inaccurate in a lot of situations. By inaccurate, I mean the actual delay time seems to vary by 250-500ms more or less. Although this isn't a huge amount of time, when using it to hide/show UI elements the time can be visibly noticeable.
Are there any tricks that can be done to ensure that setTimeout() performs accurately (without resorting to an external API) or is this a lost cause?
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Because you are using setTimeout() or setInterval() . They cannot be trusted, there are no accuracy guarantees for them. They are allowed to lag arbitrarily, and they do not keep a constant pace but tend to drift (as you have observed).
The setInterval method has the same syntax as setTimeout : let timerId = setInterval(func|code, [delay], [arg1], [arg2], ...) All arguments have the same meaning. But unlike setTimeout it runs the function not only once, but regularly after the given interval of time.
There are two timer functions in JavaScript: setTimeout() and setInterval() . The following section will show you how to create timers to delay code execution as well as how to perform one or more actions repeatedly using these functions in JavaScript.
We all know that passing a string to setTimeout (or setInterval ) is evil, because it is run in the global scope, has performance issues, is potentially insecure if you're injecting any parameters, etc. So doing this is definitely deprecated: setTimeout('doSomething(someVar)', 10000);
Are there any tricks that can be done to ensure that
setTimeout()performs accurately (without resorting to an external API) or is this a lost cause?
No and no. You're not going to get anything close to a perfectly accurate timer with setTimeout() - browsers aren't set up for that. However, you don't need to rely on it for timing things either. Most animation libraries figured this out years ago: you set up a callback with setTimeout(), but determine what needs to be done based on the value of (new Date()).milliseconds (or equivalent). This allows you to take advantage of more reliable timer support in newer browsers, while still behaving appropriately on older browsers.
It also allows you to avoid using too many timers! This is important: each timer is a callback. Each callback executes JS code. While JS code is executing, browser events - including other callbacks - are delayed or dropped. When the callback finishes, additional callbacks must compete with other browser events for a chance to execute. Therefore, one timer that handles all pending tasks for that interval will perform better than two timers with coinciding intervals, and (for short timeouts) better than two timers with overlapping timeouts!
Summary: stop using setTimeout() to implement "one timer / one task" designs, and use the real-time clock to smooth out UI actions.
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