Determine "active" or "idle" on initiation

[paulirish]

from dmtr:

The user is assumed to be 'active for the first x seconds', this is certainly true for the document, but not so for the document elements. I guess natural thing to do would be to check if a mouse is 'over' [the document or element] to determine the initial state. If it is - initial state would be 'active', if it is not - 'idle'. That seems to be pretty consistent.

We should probably add an initial callback event to differentiate the immediate idling from the eventual idling.

[mikesherov]

I like the suggestion of querying the initial state on pageload to see if you're idle right at the beginning. I would argue adding page visibility to this check probably also matters.

[paulirish]

pagevisibility is in 50% of browsers now so it should definitely be used when possible
http://caniuse.com/#feat=pagevisibility

[reliq]

I wouldn't think you'd need to determine whether the user is active on page load. I think it's a feasible assumption to say he/she would be active as the page is loaded.

[mikesherov]

@reliq, it's probably an edge case, but you fire up your browser and you have 10 tabs restored, 9 out of 10 are idle on page load :)

[reliq]

@mikesherov true, that may occur at some point I guess. Let it be then.