[whatwg] HTML extension for system idle detection.

[Jens Alfke]

On Sep 5, 2009, at 3:33 PM, timeless wrote:

> In working on the n900, we've added features which generally break
> javascript activity if the user is not using the web page.
...
> If a client server application wants to know if the user is idle, the
> algorithm is this:
> If the client hasn't sent a message indicating the user is not idle in
> the last <pick interval>, then the user is idle.

The first statement implies that a web-app on your platform cannot  
implement the algorithm you recommend. The web-app would need to send  
a series of 'ping' messages to the server every n minutes as long as  
the user is using the device, so the server won't set the status to  
'idle'. But if the user's doing something else on the device other  
than using that page, its JS won't run, so its timeout doesn't get a  
chance to send the message.

Basically, it sounds like a web-app on the n900 cannot make decisions  
based on overall idle time at all, only on idle time within its app.  
So it wouldn't make sense for the platform to implement this API.

—Jens