javascript: pausing in a loop

[Jonathan Hoyt]

I'm building a little bit for a page that scrolls thru "features" and
I cannot for the life of me figure out how to do a javascript loop,
and pause during each loop. Anyone done this before and wanna give me
some tips?

Jon Hoyt

[Daniel Parker]

Yup: Build a simple function that, at its end, sets a timeout to run itself again.

var changeItem = function(){}; // it'll probably need this in order to use the function name inside the function itself.

function changeItem() {

  // rotate item in the list, then

  setTimeout(changeItem, 5000); // run again in 5 seconds

}

- daniel parker -

[Jonathan Hoyt]

Is there any way to break out of this?

Jon

[Jonathan Hoyt]

This doesn't seem to work:

  var cycleFacts = function(){};

  function cycleFacts(){

    next_fact();

    setTimeout(cycleFacts, 3000);

  };

cycleFacts();

my function next_fact() works fine from the safari dev console, but using the code above doesn't do anything.

Jon

On Jul 14, 2009, at 9:47 PM, Daniel Parker wrote:

[Daniel Parker]

With a little testing, it looks like you don't need/want the var cycleFacts = function(){}; line.

- daniel parker -

[Jonathan Hoyt]

Ok, this works, but is there any way to "break" the loop?

Jon

[Jonathan Hoyt]

I got it figured out. I ended up doing this:

var stop = 0;

  function cycleFacts(){

    if(stop==0){

      next_fact();

      setTimeout(cycleFacts, 4000);

    };

  };

Then, I can set stop = 1 anywhere else, and it will kill the loop :-)

Jon

On Jul 14, 2009, at 10:50 PM, Daniel Parker wrote:

[Daniel Parker]

You got it. :) I love how Javascript can do that .. just set a variable to stop something else that is going on. To make it more pretty, you could make a function that starts the loop and a function that sets the variable to stop the loop - startLoop(), stopLoop().

- daniel parker -