Don't have time to send get request on window unload

I want to notify the server on user closes browser window.

I tried all of the

$(window).bind("beforeunload", function() {
    $.get("${contextPath}/notify?direction=logout");
});

and

$(window).unload( function() {
    $.get("${contextPath}/notify?direction=logout");
});

and

$(window).unload(function() {
    $.ajax({
      url: "${contextPath}/notify?direction=logout"
    });
});

but neither work well, despite the fact, that it is said in manual that it probably should.

In Firefox I have no notifications only on window close, but have ones on page refresh. In Chrome I have neither.

I tried to trace this script in Firebug or Chrome Developer Tools and found, that it is starting to work if traced! So I think it does not work normally because it has no time to send request before window closed or navigated.

Is this true? How to accomplish my task?

It is very tricky because the browser will not wait untill the response comes so the ajax request might get aborted.

You can try something like this in beforeunload event.

$(window).bind("beforeunload", function() {
    $.ajax({
        async: false,//This will make sure the browser waits until request completes
        url: "${contextPath}/notify?direction=logout"
    });
});