Is there a more accurate way to create a Javascript timer than setTimeout?

Question

Something that has always bugged me is how unpredictable the setTimeout() method in Javascript is.

In my experience, the timer is horribly inaccurate in

Answer 1

Here's an example demoing Shog9's suggestion. This fills a jquery progress bar smoothly over 6 seconds, then redirects to a different page once it's filled:

var TOTAL_SEC = 6;
var FRAMES_PER_SEC = 60;
var percent = 0;
var startTime = new Date().getTime();

setTimeout(updateProgress, 1000 / FRAMES_PER_SEC);

function updateProgress() {
    var currentTime = new Date().getTime();

    // 1000 to convert to milliseconds, and 100 to convert to percentage
    percent = (currentTime - startTime) / (TOTAL_SEC * 1000) * 100;

    $("#progressbar").progressbar({ value: percent });

    if (percent >= 100) {
        window.location = "newLocation.html";
    } else {
        setTimeout(updateProgress, 1000 / FRAMES_PER_SEC);
    }                 
}