How do I handle user leaving/closing the page effectively?

Question

Okay, I have a live application, it runs a messenger and I am trying to find the most reliable way to determine if a user has navigated away from the page or closed the window, et cetera. I have already implemented this:

window.onbeforeunload = function(event){ /* my code */ };

But that isn't always very reliable, sometimes it will fire and sometimes not. Is there a more reliable way of determining user presence or lack thereof?

Sometimes document.onblur will work, but it's also intermittent and depends on the browser. — Marc Marta, Jun 11 '13 at 19:27

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 11 '13 at 19:26

2

Have the browser ping the server every X minutes. If you're making a chat client you'll likely have all the infrastructure you need already.

answered Jun 11 '13 at 19:26

Halcyon

57,230
10
89
128

How do I handle user leaving/closing the page effectively?

1 Answers1