Is there a way to detect if a browser window is not currently active?

Question

I have JavaScript that is doing activity periodically. When the user is not looking at the site (i.e., the window or tab does not have focus), it\'d be nice to not run.

Answer 1

If you want to act on whole browser blur: As I commented, if browser lose focus none of the suggested events fire. My idea is to count up in a loop and reset the counter if an event fire. If the counter reach a limit I do a location.href to an other page. This also fire if you work on dev-tools.

var iput=document.getElementById("hiddenInput");
   ,count=1
   ;
function check(){
         count++;
         if(count%2===0){
           iput.focus();
         }
         else{
           iput.blur();
         }
         iput.value=count;  
         if(count>3){
           location.href="http://Nirwana.com";
         }              
         setTimeout(function(){check()},1000);
}   
iput.onblur=function(){count=1}
iput.onfocus=function(){count=1}
check();

This is a draft successful tested on FF.