How vB's Cron Jobs Work (and the problem with them)
vBulletin has a great, built-in scheduled task system. It relies on an invisible pixel image output on the bottom of the forum pages to run the scheduled tasks (cron jobs). It works like this: When a user visits a page, vB checks to see if there are any pending cron jobs to execute. If there are, the cron image is inserted at the bottom of the page. That image, instead of displaying a real image, actually calls the scheduled task script which first returns the image, then proceeds to execute the scheduled task. This setup can cause the page load to hang, depending on what browser you're using. vB goes to great lengths to send the content-length header, then flush the image data to the browser. This causes some browsers to stop loading the page even though the script isn't finished running (it has to execute the cron job), since the data returned matches the content-length header. However, not all browsers are that smart. Sometimes they sit there with whatever indicator they have spinning, saying the page is still loading, until the scheduled task has finished.
How this product works, and how it fixes the problem
This add-on fixes the problem. How it works:
1. First it checks to see if the user has Javascript enabled. No Javascript means the standard vB cron image is used, so your scheduled tasks keep running.
2. If Javascript is enabled, then a short snippet of Javascript is inserted at the bottom of the page instead of the cron image.
3. What this Javascript does is first wait until the page is completely loaded. After the page is loaded, it ask for the standard vB cron image, which runs your scheduled task. After the image is loaded, it displays it (it's invisible) at the bottom of the page. It's as simple as that.
The advantage of this setup is that the cron image is requested via Javascript after the page is done loading, so that the user doesn't think something is wrong and wonder why the page won't finish loading.
Installation
Import the product XML via the Product Manager. You can enable/disable the product in the JS Cron Image Options group.
