Question

I’m very confused, with greasemonkey setTimeout just isn’t working, it never calls the function, looking online people say greasemonkey doesn’t support setTimeout, is there anyway to make my objective (below) work?

function countdown(time, id) {
   if(document.getElementById(id)) {
       var name = document.getElementById(id);
       var hrs = Math.floor(time / 3600); 
       var minutes = Math.floor((time - (hrs * 3600)) / 60); 
       var seconds = Math.floor(time - (hrs * 3600) - minutes * 60);

       if(hrs>0) {
            name.innerhtml = hrs + 'h ' + minutes + 'm';
       } else if(minutes>0) {
            name.innerhtml = minutes + 'm ' + seconds + 's';
       } else {
            name.innerhtml = seconds + 's';
       }
   } else {
       setTimeout('countdown(' + --time + ',' + id + ')', 100);
   }

   if(time <= 0)
      window.location.reload();
   else
      setTimeout('countdown(' + --time + ',' + id + ')', 1000);
} 

Answer 1

The problem lies in the textual parameter of setTimeout. It works very well with greasemonkey but if you use textual commands instead of callbacks, the code is never executed since greasemonkey sandbox is cleared by the time the setTimeout fires. It tries to run eval with the textual parameter wchis in turn tries to call function countdown which doesn’t exist by that time anymore.

Currently the program flow is as follows:

1. function countdown(){}

2. setTimeout("countdown()", 1000);

3. clearGreasemonkeySandbox();

4. ... wait 1 sec...

5. eval("countdown()"); // <- countdown doesn't exist anymore

So you should use callbacks instead, this way a pointer to a function is used instead of the full sentence.

setTimeout(function(){
    countdown(--time, id);
}, 1000);