Auto refresh any web page

Last night when the Apple store went down, I got tired of hitting refresh in Safari every few minutes while waiting for it to come back up, and went searching for something that would do the job for free.

Now, this is not for coders who will laugh hysterically at my incompetence, but for those of you that are either lazy or don't program at all. I fit both categories.

Back in 2005 someone going by the moniker of Biovizier posted the solution on Macosxhints.com. It's a little html snippet that will refresh any web page as frequently as you'd like, and its easily customizable for any page at all.

Here it is:

 <html>

<head>

<**** **********="refresh" content="60">

</head>

<body>

<FRAMESET>

<FRAME src="http://www.tuaw.com">

</FRAMESET>

</body>

</html>

Copy this into TextEdit and save it with an .html extension. Then just double click it.

You can change the refresh time from 60 to the amount of seconds you want to wait before the page refreshes, and you can change the URL to anything you want. I was using: http://apple.com/store and having it refresh every 20 seconds which must make me a certifiable fanatic.

Since I saw this I've found a ton of uses for it, like refreshing eBay auctions in the last few minutes, or just leaving it set for TUAW to see new stories coming up when I'm doing something else. At present I have four or five of these snippets in a folder on my desktop for different purposes.

Give it a try and see if you don't find a handful of uses for it.

Okay, you coders can stop laughing now.

Note: TJ Luoma just let me know that this tip won't work with Twitter which intentionally blocks this sort of thing.

Thanks to macosxhints.com and Biovizier wherever you are.

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Source: http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=41358

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Last night when the Apple store went down, I got tired of hitting refresh in Safari every few minutes while waiting for it to come back up,...

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Trevor Corey

this crap doesn't work lol... good job ya jamoke

August 26 2010 at 12:01 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

djcritch

I would just use http://www.refreshthis.com for this! much easier then messing about with code!

February 02 2010 at 4:01 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

gil

any way to get this to refresh a page and then stop once the pages posts a change or update

January 06 2010 at 5:50 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

djcritch

you can also use http://www.refreshthis.com to auto refresh any website from any browser

November 03 2009 at 1:12 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

3xploiter

Tell application "system events"
repeat
keystroke "r" using command down
delay 20
end repeat
end tell

...

I'm on my iPhone or I'd throw some code up to do the menu item "Reload"...

You can even tell it to repeat until your web browser isn't frontmost or something to stop it quickly.

October 02 2009 at 1:04 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

David

I would love something like this to work with my bank's website. I need to frequently reference my transactions over the course of an hour or so every night while I balance my businesses books. But the bank's website logs me out after 3 minutes of inactivity. I tried this method, but because the URL changes depending on which data I'm looking at, it's useless. I think Applescript would do it, but I frequently also have other browser windows open, so I'm not sure I know how to make just the right one reload, even if it's not in front.

October 01 2009 at 11:31 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

brendan

Don't use this method for eBay at all.

Since they updated their layout with all that ajaxy crap, ***it actually does a live countdown at the end of auctions***...

Absolutely no reason to refresh eBay at all now. Just two or three tabs - one for the auction, one for your maximum comfortable bid ready to hit "confirm bid" and one last one with a higher bid a few bucks higher just in case, if you're that way inclined.

October 01 2009 at 11:07 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

2 replies to brendan's comment

@Brendan: or you could just run jBidWatcher and not even have to be at the keyboard for the end of the auction :)

October 02 2009 at 3:20 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

brendan

TC: Ah, but then where's the excitement?

October 02 2009 at 3:28 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

buxtonmarauder

don't use this method for ebay, just use auctionsniper or some other snipe service..

October 01 2009 at 5:50 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

nova20

Keep in mind that, while this works with the apple store, it may not work with all web pages. I've tried this in the past and found a few pages that will instantly break out of the frame, rendering my html-fu worthless.

October 01 2009 at 8:34 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Cello

My doctor told me frames are bad for my health

October 01 2009 at 7:07 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply