Develop Reference

How to coordinate timing for sound and animation

I'm trying to add sound and animation to this "ping-pong" (fizz-buzz) program. What I want to happen is for each item in the array (number/ping/pong/pingpong) the text fades in on the list while the sound and animation play.
What I'm getting is - the whole list fades in all at once, the sounds all play one at a time (and if the number entered is large it goes on forever) but the animation happens only once (apparently for just the last animation).
The whole project is at: https://github.com/karenfreemansmith/Epic-AdvancedJSwk1-PingPongCalculator, along with a link to a page with what is currently working. (Slightly earlier than the code below, which has only broken it in new ways.)
I've been trying to use setInterval and setTimeout to sync them all by calling a function that will show one element at a time with it's sound and animation:
var play=setInterval(function() {
var i=1;
output.forEach(item => {
showNext(item);
if(i>=output.length) {
clearInterval(play);
}
i++;
});
}, 1000);
And the function looks like this:
function showNext(item) {
acorn.style.animation= "";
acorn.style.webkitAnimation="";
if(item==="ping") {
window.setTimeout(playPing(), 1000);
} else if(item==="pong") {
window.setTimeout(playPong(), 1000);
} else if(item==="ping-pong") {
window.setTimeout(playVolley(), 1000);
} else {
window.setTimeout(playMiss(), 1000);
$("#pingpong").append("<p class='"+item+"'>" + item + "</p>");
}
}
and the play functions are all basically the same, but with different sounds:
function playPing() {
acorn.style.animation= "ping 1s linear";
acorn.style.webkitAnimation="ping 1s linear";
sndSlam1.currentTime = 0;
sndSlam1.play();
$("#pingpong").append("<p class='ping'>ping</p>");
}
I think I must be misunderstanding how the setTimeout is working. Why does the animation only play once? And why is there no pause between the elements being added to the list?

The problem here is because, yes, you do slightly misunderstand how setTimeout works.
What you do is call it like this:
window.setTimeout(playVolley(), 1000);
Which is equivalent to saying: "hey JS, immediately execute my function playVolley (since I use () to specify that I want it called), and THEN in 1000 seconds call whatever it has returned".
What, I strongly suspect, you really wanted to do, is:
window.setTimeout(playVolley, 1000);
Note how there are no "()" after playVolley. This is equivalent to saying: "hey JS, in 1000 seconds execute my cool func called playVolley".
If "passing function name without ()" doesn't make sense to you, that's okay, just read about "functions as first-class objects" (for example, here). The idea is just any function is really like a variable which holds a "function" in it, and you can pass it to anything takes "function as an input. Which, for example, setTimeout does - it needs a "function" and an "integer" to set a timeout.
But only fixing this won't help you. There's another problem here:
output.forEach(item => {
showNext(item);
...
}
See, here you effectively set output.length timeouts, all of them at once, to fire in 1000 seconds. Which they will do - in 1000 all of them will be executed simultaneously. So all you'll fix by the first fix is that all of your animations and sounds will play not immediately, but after a 1000ms delay.
What, I again strongly suspect, you wanted to do is to call every step of output array one by one, with 1000 delay between each other.
To achieve this you'll need to refactor the way you schedule your calls. Instead of scheduling them all at once, you'll need to chain them. A dirty, but simple example would be to have an index to current animation step, and when your playXXX finishes, it schedules next step to run, until all the steps are completed.
var currentAnimationStep = 0;
var output = ["ping", "pong", "ping", "pong"];
snowNext(output[currentAnimationStep]);
function showNext(item) {
+ if (item === undefined) {
+ return;
+ }
+
...
}
function playPing() {
acorn.style.animation= "ping 1s linear";
acorn.style.webkitAnimation="ping 1s linear";
sndSlam1.currentTime = 0;
sndSlam1.play();
$("#pingpong").append("<p class='ping'>ping</p>");
+ currentAnimationStep += 1;
+ showNext(output[currentAnimationStep]);
}
// All other playXXX functions will need the same call added
Again, this is a very dirty example (globals, eeeew), don't tell anybody I showed you this, but it can get you started, and when you'll get a hang of closures, you'll rewrite it to something more manageable.

Why does function only run once?Trying to run function multiple times,after previous invokation complete, using an counter function

I am currently working on a book with page turn effect in jQuery (no plugin). The page turn effect works fine so far, as long as you click through the pages one by one. But now I want to include a dropdown selection (i.e. a select element) so the user can directly jump to the selected content. I tried to make this work with loops and with the .each() method, so that the turnRightPage/ turnLeftPage function is called repeatedly, until the page with the selected content is shown. But after quite a bit of trial and error and a lot of research, I think loops iterate too fast for my turnRightPage /turnLeftPage()-function (which are the transform functions that turn the respective page), in that the loop is done, before the function has completed. I think, what I need to do, is find a way to pause the loop until the function has finished executing and then resume with the next iteration. I think the most promising approach would be using a function with an iteration counter, like it was suggested here:
Javascript: wait for function in loop to finish executing before next iteration (Thanks to jfriend00 at this point) I have also read
Invoking a jQuery function after .each() has completed and
wait for each jQuery
among others, where similar solutions were suggested.
Below is how I tried to implement jfriend00's callback. I added a return statement to break out of that "callback loop", once the number of page turns is completed.
//determine whether to flip pages forward or back - first forward
if(currentPagePos < foundPagePos){ // => turn right page
//determine how many times need to turn page
if (pageDifference > 1 && pageDifference % 2 !=0) {
var numPageTurns = (pageDifference-1)/2;
pageForward (numPageTurns);
} //else if ... rest omitted for brevity
}
function pageForward (numPageTurns){
var i = 0;
function next(){
i++;
if (i <= numPageTurns){
turnRightPage ();
} else {
return;
}
}
next();
};
The full code can be seen here: http://jsfiddle.net/snshjyxr/1/
It DOES turn the page, but only once! What am I missing?
I am still very new to javascript / jQuery so my apologies, if the problem seems all too obvious. Any pointers appreciated. Thx!

The thing is all the page turns are fired, but all at once. You have to wait until each transition is finished to start the next one.
Use a callback function in your turnRightPage and turnLeftPage functions. Example for turnRightPage :
function turnRightPage(callback) {
[...]
//change class AFTER transition (frm. treehouse-site)
$page.on('webkitTransitionEnd otransitionend oTransitionEnd msTransitionEnd transitionend', function () {
//need to double-set z-index or else secondtime turning page open setting z-index does not work (tried in Chrome 38.0.2125.111 m)
$page.css("z-index", turnedZindex + 1);
$(".turned").removeClass("turned");
$page.addClass("turned");
if(typeof callback == "function") {
callback();
}
});
};
And in your pageForward function, use turnRightPage recursively:
function pageForward(numPageTurns) {
console.log("number of FORWARD page turns: " + numPageTurns);
if(numPageTurns > 0) {
turnRightPage(function(){
pageForward(numPageTurns - 1);
});
}
};
Here is your updated jsfiddle. As you can see, there's a remaining bug when you make several page changes which is caused by the fact that you're adding listeners on the transition end every time a page is turned, and never removing them. So they're all executing every time.
EDIT: jsfiddle updated again without the annoying last bug. As you can see, all it took was to unbind the event listener as soon as it's fired.

Updating style at beginning of button click code; removing after execution

I have a block of code that executes when a button is clicked. The code uses a loop that sometimes takes a while to complete. When the user clicks the button, I want the cursor to change a "wait" cursor before the loop begins. Once the loop is finished, the cursor should return to normal.
What is actually happening (in Chrome for Windows at least) is that the style doesn't get updated until after the loop. It seems to be a quirk of how buttons work. I really don't know. I'm out of guesses!
A sample fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/ra51npjr/1/ (it just uses console.log to execute "something"... you might need to change how many times the loop runs depending on how zippy or slow your machine is).
Sample HTML:
<div class="fakebody">
<button id="foo">Foo</button>
</div>
Sample CSS:
.fakeBody {
height: 1000px;
width: 100%;
}
.wait {
cursor: wait !important;
}
Sample JavaScript:
$('#foo').on('click', function (e) {
$('.fakebody').addClass('wait');
for (i = 0; i < 10000; i++) {
console.log(i);
}
$('.fakebody').removeClass('wait');
});
--
Here are my ASSUMPTIONS on how the script should work:
The click happens, which fires up the code. Indeed, if I log "started!" inside the code block, it will correctly log that it has started
The cursor should be a wait cursor so long as it is hovering anywhere over "fakebody".
The for loop is just a simple way to kill a few seconds to see the effect. Feel free to substitute any other loop that takes a while to complete
At the end of the loop, the cursor is no longer a wait cursor
What is actually happening:
The loop executes
At the end of the loop, the cursor turns to a "wait" cursor and then instantly back to a regular cursor. The change doesn't happen until the loop is complete
Does anybody know a technique or workaround to get the cursor to change before the loop starts instead of only after it is finished? Is this known behaviour that I need to educate myself about (and if so, do you know where I should start looking?)

This is a common issue in JavaScript. This question may provide some deeper insight, but essentially the point is that synchronous JavaScript execution must finish before the browser can perform other actions (like updating the view).
Because .addClass, the for loop, and .removeClass all occur synchronously, the browser doesn't get a chance to redraw anything. A technique that is often used in these cases is to setTimeout with a timeout of 0, which essentially just "yields" control back to the browser.
$('.fakebody').addClass('wait');
setTimeout(function() {
for (i = 0; i < 10000; i++) {
console.log(i);
}
$('.fakebody').removeClass('wait');
}, 0);
If this is a common pattern, you could potentially extract it out to a function (which would also help improve readability) that wraps the async setTimeout. Here's a simple example:
/**
* Wraps a long-running JavaScript process in a setTimeout
* which yields to allow the browser to process events, e.g. redraw
*/
function yieldLongRunning(preFn, fn, postFn, ctx) {
if (arguments.length <= 2) {
ctx = fn; fn = preFn;
preFn = postFn = function() {};
}
preFn.call(ctx);
setTimeout(function() {
fn.call(ctx);
postFn.call(ctx);
}, 0);
}
And use it like so:
yieldLongRunning(function() {
$('.fakebody').addClass('wait');
},
function() {
for (i = 0; i < 10000; i++) {
console.log(i);
}
},
function() {
$('.fakebody').removeClass('wait');
});
As a side point, note that setTimeout(..., 0) simply queues the function in the browser's event loop, alongside other queued JavaScript functions, as well as other types of events (like redraws). Thus, no setTimeout call is guaranteed to run precisely at the given time - the timeout argument is simply a lower-bound (and, in fact, there is a minimum timeout of 4ms specified by HTML5 spec, which browsers use to prevent infinite timeout loops; you can still use 0, though, and the browser will add it to the event queue after the minimum delay).

I think you should try to force a redraw by hiding + showing the parent element.
Try this:
document.getElementById('fakebody').style.display = 'none';
document.getElementById('fakebody').style.display = 'block';
Before and after the loop (i.e. when you want the child element "foo" to refresh.
EDIT: Since you're using jquery you could do this:
$('#fakebody').hide().show(0);

Demo - Use queue & dequeue to construct an order of what should happen when in jQuery.
$('#foo').on('click', function (e) {
$('.fakebody').addClass('wait').queue(function(n) {
for (i = 0; i < 10000; i++) { console.log(i); }
}).removeClass('wait').dequeue();
});

Why doesn't this setTimeout-based code work in Firefox with a small timeout (works in Internet Explorer/Chrome)?

I have the following code which demonstrates the difference in calling a long-running function directly from an event trigger, vs. using setTimeout().
Intended behavior:
When the first button is pressed, it appears pressed, the calculation runs for several seconds, then when the calculation finishes, the button appears depressed again and the second column changes from "not calculating yet" to "calculation done". (I won't elaborate on why that is supposed to happen; it's explained in linked answer.)
When the second button is pressed, the button depresses immediately; the second column immediately changes to "calculating..." text. When the calculation finishes several seconds later, the second column changes from "calculating..." to "calculation done".
What actually happens:
This works perfectly in Chrome (both buttons behave as expected)
This works perfectly in Internet Explorer 8
This does NOT work in Firefox (v.25) as-is. Specifically, the second button behaves 100% as the first one.
Changing the timeout in setTimeout() from 0 to 1 has no effect
Changing the timeout in setTimeout() from 0 to 500 works
Which leaves me with a big conundrum.
According to the whole reason behind why setTimeout() works whereas lack of one doesn't, the delay should have zero effect on how things work, since setTimeout()'s main purpose is to change the queuing order here, NOT to delay things.
So, why is it not working with delay 0 or 1 on Firefox, but works as expected with delay 500 (and works with any delay on Internet Explorer 8/Chrome)?
UPDATE: In addition to source code below, I also made a JSFiddle. But for some reason JSFiddle refuses to even load on my Internet Explorer 8, so for that testing, the code below is required.
UPDATE2: Someone raised the possibility of there being an issue with configuration setting dom.min_timeout_value in Firefox. I have edited it from 4 to 0, restarted the browser, and nothing was fixed. It still fails with a timeout of 0 or 1 and succeeds with 500.
Here is my source code - I simply saved it to a HTML file on C: drive and opened in all three browsers:
<html><body>
<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.9.1.js"></script>
<table border=1>
<tr><td><button id='do'>Do long calc - bad status!</button></td>
<td><div id='status'>Not Calculating yet.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td><button id='do_ok'>Do long calc - good status!</button></td>
<td><div id='status_ok'>Not Calculating yet.</div></td></tr>
</table>
<script>
function long_running(status_div) {
var result = 0;
for (var i = 0; i < 1000; i++) {
for (var j = 0; j < 700; j++) {
for (var k = 0; k < 200; k++) {
result = result + i + j + k;
}
}
}
$(status_div).text('calclation done');
}
// Assign events to buttons
$('#do').on('click', function () {
$('#status').text('calculating....');
long_running('#status');
});
$('#do_ok').on('click', function () {
$('#status_ok').text('calculating....');
window.setTimeout(function (){ long_running('#status_ok') }, 0);
});
</script>
</body></html>
To test, you will need to change the nested loop boundaries to 300/100/100 for Internet Explorer 8; or to 1000/1000/500 for Chrome, due to different sensitivity of "this JS is taking too long" error coupled with JavaScript engine speed.

There is a copy of the current (Jun 28, 2016) implementation of window.setTimeout() in Ubuntu.
As we can see, the timer gets inserted by this line of code:
nsAutoPtr<TimeoutInfo>* insertedInfo =
mTimeouts.InsertElementSorted(newInfo.forget(), GetAutoPtrComparator(mTimeouts));
Then a few lines below you have an if() statement:
if (insertedInfo == mTimeouts.Elements() && !mRunningExpiredTimeouts) {
...
The insertedInfo == mTimeouts.Elements() checks whether the timer that was just inserted already timed out. The following block does NOT execute the attached function, but the main loop will immediately notice that a timer timed out and thus it will skip the IDLE state (a yield of the CPU) that you are expecting.
This clearly (at least to me) explains the behavior you are experiencing. The rendering on the screen is another process (task/thread) and the CPU needs to be relinquished for that other process to get a chance to re-paint the screen. For that to happen, you need to wait long enough so your timer function does not get executed immediately and a yield happens.
As you've notice a pause of 500ms does the trick. You can probably use a smaller number, such as 50ms. Either way it is not going to guarantee that a yield happens, but chances are it will happen if the computer on which that code is running is not currently swamped (i.e. an anti-virus is not currently running full speed in the background...)
The complete SetTimeout() function from Firefox:
(location of the file in the source: dom/workers/WorkerPrivate.cpp)
int32_t
WorkerPrivate::SetTimeout(JSContext* aCx,
dom::Function* aHandler,
const nsAString& aStringHandler,
int32_t aTimeout,
const Sequence<JS::Value>& aArguments,
bool aIsInterval,
ErrorResult& aRv)
{
AssertIsOnWorkerThread();
const int32_t timerId = mNextTimeoutId++;
Status currentStatus;
{
MutexAutoLock lock(mMutex);
currentStatus = mStatus;
}
// It's a script bug if setTimeout/setInterval are called from a close handler
// so throw an exception.
if (currentStatus == Closing) {
JS_ReportError(aCx, "Cannot schedule timeouts from the close handler!");
}
// If the worker is trying to call setTimeout/setInterval and the parent
// thread has initiated the close process then just silently fail.
if (currentStatus >= Closing) {
aRv.Throw(NS_ERROR_FAILURE);
return 0;
}
nsAutoPtr<TimeoutInfo> newInfo(new TimeoutInfo());
newInfo->mIsInterval = aIsInterval;
newInfo->mId = timerId;
if (MOZ_UNLIKELY(timerId == INT32_MAX)) {
NS_WARNING("Timeout ids overflowed!");
mNextTimeoutId = 1;
}
// Take care of the main argument.
if (aHandler) {
newInfo->mTimeoutCallable = JS::ObjectValue(*aHandler->Callable());
}
else if (!aStringHandler.IsEmpty()) {
newInfo->mTimeoutString = aStringHandler;
}
else {
JS_ReportError(aCx, "Useless %s call (missing quotes around argument?)",
aIsInterval ? "setInterval" : "setTimeout");
return 0;
}
// See if any of the optional arguments were passed.
aTimeout = std::max(0, aTimeout);
newInfo->mInterval = TimeDuration::FromMilliseconds(aTimeout);
uint32_t argc = aArguments.Length();
if (argc && !newInfo->mTimeoutCallable.isUndefined()) {
nsTArray<JS::Heap<JS::Value>> extraArgVals(argc);
for (uint32_t index = 0; index < argc; index++) {
extraArgVals.AppendElement(aArguments[index]);
}
newInfo->mExtraArgVals.SwapElements(extraArgVals);
}
newInfo->mTargetTime = TimeStamp::Now() + newInfo->mInterval;
if (!newInfo->mTimeoutString.IsEmpty()) {
if (!nsJSUtils::GetCallingLocation(aCx, newInfo->mFilename, &newInfo->mLineNumber)) {
NS_WARNING("Failed to get calling location!");
}
}
nsAutoPtr<TimeoutInfo>* insertedInfo =
mTimeouts.InsertElementSorted(newInfo.forget(), GetAutoPtrComparator(mTimeouts));
LOG(TimeoutsLog(), ("Worker %p has new timeout: delay=%d interval=%s\n",
this, aTimeout, aIsInterval ? "yes" : "no"));
// If the timeout we just made is set to fire next then we need to update the
// timer, unless we're currently running timeouts.
if (insertedInfo == mTimeouts.Elements() && !mRunningExpiredTimeouts) {
nsresult rv;
if (!mTimer) {
mTimer = do_CreateInstance(NS_TIMER_CONTRACTID, &rv);
if (NS_FAILED(rv)) {
aRv.Throw(rv);
return 0;
}
mTimerRunnable = new TimerRunnable(this);
}
if (!mTimerRunning) {
if (!ModifyBusyCountFromWorker(true)) {
aRv.Throw(NS_ERROR_FAILURE);
return 0;
}
mTimerRunning = true;
}
if (!RescheduleTimeoutTimer(aCx)) {
aRv.Throw(NS_ERROR_FAILURE);
return 0;
}
}
return timerId;
}
IMPORTANT NOTE: The JavaScript instruction yield, has nothing to do with what I am talking about. I am talking about the sched_yield() functionality which happens when a binary process calls certain functions, such as sched_yield() itself, poll(), select(), etc.

I faced this issue with Firefox while toggling CSS classes using jQuery to control a CSS transition.
Increasing the duration of setTimeout to 50 from 0 helped, but as Alexis suggested this wasn’t 100% reliable.
The best (if longwinded) solution I found was to combine an interval timer with an IF statement to actually check whether the necessary styles had been applied before triggering the transition, rather using setTimeout and assuming execution had taken place in the intended order, e.g.
var firefox_pause = setInterval(function() {
//Test whether page is ready for next step - in this case the div must have a max height applied
if ($('div').css('max-height') != "none") {
clear_firefox_pause();
//Add next step in queue here
}
}, 10);
function clear_firefox_pause() {
clearInterval(firefox_pause);
}
In my case at least, this seems to work every time in Firefox.

In Firefox, the minimum value for setTimeout() calls is configurable and defaults to 4 in current versions:
dom.min_timeout_value The minimum length of time, in milliseconds,
that the window.setTimeout() function can set a timeout delay for.
This defaults to 4 ms (before 10 ms). Calls to setTimeout() with a
delay smaller than this will be clamped to this minimum value.
Values like 0 or 1 should behave like 4—no idea if that will cause delays in your code or just break it.

clearInterval - something's amiss

It seems that everyone has a few problems with clearInterval. I have built a slider that allows people to hover a click on arrows. The banner also rotates ever few seconds. I want to be able to have the auto-rotate turn off after someone clicks on one of the arrows.
Here's my code:
$(function(){
var intvl = 0;
intvl = setInterval(heroTransitionNext, 2000);
$('.rightArrow').click(function(){
window.clearInterval(intvl);
});
});
EDIT:
Here is the function it is calling:
function heroTransitionNext() {
$('.HP-hero li').filter(':visible').fadeOut('normal', function () {
if ($(this).next().length != 0) {
activeZone = parseInt(activeZone) + 1;
$(this).next().fadeIn('normal', heroNavHighlight(activeZone));
} else {
activeZone = 1;
$('.HP-hero li:first-child').fadeIn('normal', heroNavHighlight(activeZone));
}
$(this).hide();
});
};

To stop the animation you can use jquery's .stop() but not sure whether it'll solve the problem or not that you are facing (didn't visualize) but you can give it a try
$('.HP-hero li').stop(1,1); // or try $('.HP-hero li').stop()
window.clearInterval(intvl);
As say2joe said that clearInterval will just stop the function from invoking next time but it won't clear the current queue (he is right) so in that case stop could be used.
About Stop.

Depending on how much work your heroTransitionNext function is doing, it may still be executing even though the interval is cleared -- in other words, clearing the interval will stop the function from being invoked -- but, any instance of the function(s) executing in memory will continue to execute until finished.
To be more clear, here's a use case (you can check this out yourself by using a profiler in Firebug or Developer Tools):
heroTransitionNext execution time is 2.1 seconds.
clearInterval is invoked 6.1 seconds after setInterval is invoked.
At 6.1 seconds, heroTransitionNext has been invoked four times. The first three executions have completed, however, the fourth will not complete until it finishes executing (at 8.1 seconds since setInterval was called). Note: In this use case, each successive invokation will execute while the last invokation's execution is still continuing (for 100 more ms) -- in other words, you'll have execution overlap from 2 to 2.1, 4 to 4.1, and 6 to 6.1 second intervals.
If the function takes longer to execute than the interval set, use a recursive function with setTimeout(). The following link will give you a good example.
Also, a good reference for explanation is https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/window.setInterval.