Question

I want to start a timer when the user clicks on a object, and stop it when the user releases the click. All using javascript/jquery.

Answer 1

The following should get you started

var start_time;
function start() {
    start_time = new Date();
}
function end() {
    var now = new Date();
    alert(now-start_time);
}

$('#element_id').mousedown(start);
$('#element_id').mouseup(end);

the mousedown event will run the start function which sets the start time. the mouseup event will substract the start time from the current time. The result is in milliseconds