Question

I made this little function from code snippets around the net. It does what its expected to do except that it decreased by 2 seconds every countdown tick instead of one, if i refresh the page it goes back to the original time again. Can you guys see what the problem is?

                jQuery.countdown = function(selector, datevalue) {

                var amount = datevalue*1000;

                var curdate = new Date();
                curdate     =   curdate.getTime();

                var difference = amount - curdate;


                if(amount < 0 || curdate >= amount){
                    $(selector).html("Done");
                }


                else{
                    datevalue--;

                    var daysRemaining = Math.floor(difference / 1000 / 60 / 60 / 24);
                    var hoursRemaining = Math.floor(difference / 1000 / 60 / 60 - (24 * daysRemaining));
                    var minutesRemaining = Math.floor(difference / 1000 / 60 - (24 * 60 * daysRemaining) - (60 * hoursRemaining));
                    var secondsRemaining = Math.floor(difference / 1000 - (24 * 60 * 60 * daysRemaining) - (60 * 60 * hoursRemaining) - (60 * minutesRemaining));

                    $(selector).html(daysRemaining+':'+hoursRemaining+':'+minutesRemaining+':'+secondsRemaining);
                    setTimeout(function() {  
                        $.countdown(selector, datevalue);
                    }, 1000); 
                }
};




$.countdown('.date', 1332239568);

Answer 1

Remove datevalue--;

What you’re doing now is to count down to a specific epoch time datevalue. But, you are decreasing it by one second each tick. Meanwhile, current time passes in setTimeout so you are both moving in time forward and pulling the target to yourself.

Either keep the original curdate of first call, saved somewhere. Or remove datevalue--;.