On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 3:53 PM, Mike Wilson <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mikewse@hotmail.com">mikewse@hotmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
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<div dir="ltr" align="left">David Bennett<span>
wrote:</span></div><font face="Verdana" size="2"></font><font face="Verdana" size="2"></font><br>
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<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 5:30 PM, Drew Wilson <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:atwilson@google.com" target="_blank">atwilson@google.com</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="padding-left:1ex;margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:#ccc 1px solid">This
would be my inclination as well. I'm not entirely convinced that "every web
app should define their own idle timeout" is such desirable behavior that we
should build our API around it by forcing every caller to specify their idle
timeout - having a standard event that's fired with an exposed state for
apps that need it seems like a cleaner approach.
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<div>The trouble with this is it doesn't allow any experimentation on the part
of the app/entity to figure out what is the best idle time for it's purposes.
In terms of chat it might be that a 3 minute or 5 minute idle time works
best in terms of people's attention. For something like watching a
video perhaps a 15 minute idle would be a better length of time, or for an
online game a longer idle time is probably useful before being signed out.
Different purposes have different requirements for the idle time so it
makes sense to allow them to specify the different
timeouts.</div></div></blockquote>
</div></div><div dir="ltr"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><span>This
requirement could be solved in several other ways, f ex making sure that the
"standard" timeout period is short enough to not be longer than what any app
wants. Then (as was previously suggested) an app that wants a longer timeout can
do setTimeout and trigger its own idle stuff if status has not come back to
"active" during that time.</span></font></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>If we went the route of using events, I definitely think this is the way to go. Since the originally proposed API was based off of the timer API, you're really only adding one step if you want that behavior. Having a globally configured value seems sloppy and you'll have to manually use timeouts if, for example, you were using 2 libraries that used it for different purposes and thus wanted different idle timeouts.</div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div><div dir="ltr"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><span></span></font></div>
<div dir="ltr"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; ">Another
alternative is to have no event, and just a property:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><span>
window.lastUserActionTime</span></font></div>
<div dir="ltr"><font face="Verdana" size="2"><span>which is kept updated with the "msec since
epoch" for the latest user input on the desktop. Then an app can implement its
own idle functionality with totally own rules. This API has the drawback of
maybe exposing too much information (the rate of input events to other apps),
but may spawn some ideas.</span></font></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Then you're poling, which seems pretty ugly. I'd much prefer events to this.</div><div><br></div><div>2009/8/31 Max Romantschuk <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:max@romantschuk.fi" target="_blank">max@romantschuk.fi</a>></span><div class="gmail_quote">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0.8ex; border-left-width: 1px; border-left-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-left-style: solid; padding-left: 1ex; ">
<div>One issue:</div></blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0.8ex; border-left-width: 1px; border-left-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-left-style: solid; padding-left: 1ex; ">
<br>Is the user idle when the tab is in the background, when the browser is in the background, or when the user is away from the machine? These are all distinct cases of different levels of "idleness", and it's largely depended on the use case which kind of "idleness" makes sense for a particular application.<br>
</blockquote><div><br></div><div>I would argue that "when the browser is in the background" should be no different from "when the tab is in the background". Given that the information the system uses to determine idleness (mouse movements and such) are all available to a web app while it's in the foreground tab, it seems as though knowing the idle time just from the perspective of your tab is not terribly useful. So, to me, I think it's pretty clear this should be system wide idleness.</div>
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