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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-14T14:10:37+00:00

I’ve a jsp page which sets ‘timestamp’ attribute to certain HTML elements. I use

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I’ve a jsp page which sets ‘timestamp’ attribute to certain HTML elements. I use the value of these ‘timestamp’ to display time elapsed in the format – “updated 10 seconds ago” (as tooltips)

I’ve created a static HTML page for the demonstration of my issue.
This is my code:

<html>
    <head>
        <script type = "text/javascript">
            function setTime() {
                var currentDate = new Date();
                var elem = document.getElementsByClassName('supermaxvision_timestamp');
                if(elem) {
                    for (var i = 0; i < elem.length; i++) {
                        var timestamp = elem[i].getAttribute('timestamp');
                        if(timestamp) {
                            var startTimestamp = new Date();
                            startTimestamp.setTime(timestamp)
                            var difference = currentDate.getTime() -startTimestamp.getTime();
                            elem[i].innerHTML = difference + " milliseconds";
                        }
                    }
                }
                setInterval(setTime, 1000);
            }
        </script>
    </head>

    <body>
        <div class='supermaxvision_timestamp' timestamp='1353389123456' ></div>
        <div class='supermaxvision_timestamp' timestamp='1353389234567' ></div>
        <div class='supermaxvision_timestamp' timestamp='1353389345678' ></div>
        <div class='supermaxvision_timestamp' timestamp='1353389456789' ></div>
        <div class='supermaxvision_timestamp' timestamp='1353389567890' ></div>

        <button onclick="setTime()">start</button>
    </body>
</html>

you can just copy paste this code into a text file and open it in a browser (click ‘start’ button only once).

The problem is that initially the values of my div will update once every second ( as the code – setInterval(setTime, 1000)). But slowly the update interval decreases and values gets updated instantaneously. And within a minute the browser stops responding.

I’m not calling setInterval from within the loop. What is possibly wrong here?

Also, this code doesn’t work in IE.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You’re calling setInterval recursively. Every time a new interval is created, that interval creates a new interval. Eventually the browser cannot handle it.

    Maybe you would rather something like this?

    <button onclick="setInterval(setTime, 1000)">start</button>
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