What happens to setTimeout when the computer goes to sleep?
In a modern web browser, suppose I do a setTimeout for 10 minutes (at 12:00), and 5 minutes later put the computer to sleep, what should happen when the system wakes up again? What happens if it wakes up before the 10 minutes are up (at 12:09) or much later (at 16:00)?
The reason I'm asking is because I'd like to have a new authentication token requested every 10 minutes, and I'm not sure if the browser will do the right thing and immediately request a new token if it wakes up after a long time.
Clarifications: I don't wan't to use cookies - I'm trying to build a web service here; and yes, the server will reject old and invalid tokens.
Answer
As far as I've tested, it just stops and resumes after the computer wakes up. I suppose that means for a session depending on setTimeout/Interval the counter ticks on from the time the computer fell asleep.
I don't think you should rely on the accuracy of setTimeout/Interval for time critical stuff. For google chrome I discovered recently that any timeout/interval (that is shorter than 1s) will be slowed down to once a second if the tab where it's activated looses focus.
Apart from that the accuracy of timeouts/intervals is dependent on other functions running etc. In short: it's not very accurate.
So using interval and timeouts, checking the time against a starttime within the function started by it would give you better accuracy. Now if you start at 12:00, the computer goes to sleep and wakes up at 16:13 or so, checking 16:13 against 12:00 you are certain you have to renew the token. An example of using time comparison can be found here