MessageChannel

[Yaffle]

Chrome and Opera supports MessageChanel,
seems setImmediate can be implemented with it:

var m = new MessageChannel();
var setZTimeout = function (f) {

m.port1.onmessage = function (x) {
f();
};
m.port2.postMessage('');
}

MessageChannel works form Workers and SharedWorkers too, althout window.postMessage can't work form Workers

[domenic]

Hi Yaffle,

Is there anything that's better about this method than the current implementation, or is it just another alternative that doesn't work in as many browsers?

[Yaffle]

Hi, DomenicDenicola

1. you can have many 'message' listeners on window object, so window.postMessage will call all of them.

2. MessageChannel works form Workers and SharedWorkers.

As far as i know MessageChannel is supported in IE 10 PP 3, Opera, Chrome

[domenic]

1. Why is this advantageous for implementing setImmediate?

2. As far as I can see, so does postMessage, although I'd have to use the global postMessage instead of explicitly prefixing with window. I will test to see if that is actually true, but I still do not see any advantage to MessageChannel.

[Yaffle]

2. window.postMessage and selft.postMessage (where self is workers global) is different things

[domenic]

Haha yeah, as I found out while implementing the web workers version. Check that out in my fork (linked from your other issue).

[domenic]

MessageChannel is now used when it is available, mainly because it works in a web workers context.