[whatwg] HTML extension for system idle detection.

[Jeremy Orlow]

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 7:04 AM, timeless <timeless at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 10:41 AM, David Bennett<ddt at google.com> wrote:
> > I also don't see
> > why, in your particular case, you couldn't make it so that all background
> > tasks are 'idle'.
>
> We could, but the reason we stop scripts is so that the pages don't
> kill our battery life. If we sent an idle signal and the page decided
> to do something expensive, how would that help?
>
> Suppose we send an idle message to a page as it goes to the background
> and give it a 30s window before we terminate it. Your window needs 35s
> to complete its expensive task. You come back to me and say that my
> idle notification behavior is broken, because i didn't let you finish
> your task (draining my battery).
>
> We're currently getting complaints from our cellular stack people
> about each network connection which causes the radio to have to power
> up and down (in fact, they complain that there are two hits or maybe
> three: "initial request", "initial response",  and "remote closed
> connection"). If we tell pages each time they go to the background
> using your proposed idle "notification", the scripts will spend power
> waking up the radio and then the cellular people will complain even
> more.
>
> Since the reason we stop scripts is to save battery, adding another
> chance for scripts to drain the battery (by waking up the radio) is
> counter productive at best.
>

I don't really see why we're still talking about this.  If you're stopping
scripts, then all of the use cases for this proposal really don't apply to
your particular platform.  If people want to debate the merits of stopping
scripts, this doesn't seem like the right list.
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