setImmediate via MessageChannel

This article will briefly describe another method of implementing a “zero” delay setTimeout (callback, 0).

Anyone who is interested - under the cat.

Briefly about the main thing

Standard setTimeout makes the minimum delay of a few milliseconds, in IE 10 even invented setImmediate which allows you to set a "zero" delay. How it works is well written here ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/setImmediateSorting/Default.html



Sample code that works in Chrome, Safari, Opera

function setZeroTimeout(callback) {

var channel = new MessageChannel();

channel.port1.onmessage = callback;

channel.port2.postMessage('');

}



Virtues

The advantage of this method as opposed to the method described in dbaron.org/log/20100309-faster-timeouts is that it will work in WebWorkers.

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Minuses

Not all browsers are supported. Firefox is not working. because Does not support MesageChannel and SharedWorker.



The MessageChannel standard is described in the documentation www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/complete/web-messaging.html#channel-messaging