How can I make setTimeout work with negative numbers?

Question

I can use setTimeout to make a message show up three seconds after I click a button, like this:

document.getElementsByTagName("button")[0].onclick = function() {
  setTimeout(function() {
    alert("You clicked the button three seconds ago.");
  }, 3000);
}

<button>Click me</button>

But for some reason, when I try to make the message show up three seconds before I click the button, it doesn't seem to work.

document.getElementsByTagName("button")[0].onclick = function() {
  setTimeout(function() {
    alert("You will click the button three seconds from now.");
  }, -3000);
}

<button>Click me</button>

I expect the message to show up -3000 milliseconds after I click the button, that is, three seconds before I click the button, but actually it shows up immediately after I click the button. It seems that setTimeout doesn't support a negative second argument.

Is there any reason why it isn't working? Are there any workarounds or polyfills to support this missing functionality?

Answer 1

You just need to import capacitor from the flux library.