Are you one of those people that will keep refreshing a webpage in order to be the first to buy something during Black Friday? I know I am! It’s not very often, but there are these crucial times every year when you have to become a page refreshing pro in order to get the best deal.
However, it can be quite a task to continually refresh multiple web pages at the same time. Luckily, there are tools that you can use to automatically refresh a web page for you and I’m going to talk about some of them in this article.
I’ll mention tools for IE, Chrome, Safari and Firefox since those are probably the most popular web browsers currently in use.
Google Chrome Extensions
My favorite extension out of all the extensions for Chrome is Super Auto Refresh. It’s got the best mix in terms of features, functionality and design.
Once you install the extension, you will see a new icon at the far right of your address bar in Chrome. Click on that and you’ll get a long list of preset timings for refreshing the current page/tab.
You can set the refresh rate from as little as 2 seconds to as high as 60 minutes. The only downside to this extension is that it does not have an option to choose a custom time period, which a lot of the other add-ons do have.
Also, if you click on the little green hamburger icon to the right of the word “Refresh”, a new tab will load that will list out all the pages that are currently set to refresh along with the set time intervals and the amount of time remaining before the next refresh. Note that if you close a tab and then reopen it later, the extension will remember and apply the same refresh settings.
If you want to be able to enter a custom time, you’ll have to try another extension like Easy Auto Refresh. This extension works like Super Auto Refresh and has some extra options that I like. For example, if you are viewing a certain part of a webpage, then it will remember the scroll position and reload the page at the same location. This is great for longer pages where the content you are interested in refreshing may not be located at the top of the page.
Firefox Add-ons
Firefox is also another great browser that has a large number of add-ons to extend its functionality. The first one I like is ReloadEvery. It’s a very simple add-on that only adds an extra option when you right-click on a webpage.
Once installed, restart Firefox and then right-click anywhere on the webpage to see the menu option.
The extension has a couple of presets or you can choose Custom if you like. If you have multiple tabs open, you can click on Enable All Tabs to enable auto refresh on all the currently open tabs. You can also check Auto Enable New Tab if you want every new tab you open to have auto refresh enabled.
The second add-on that I like for Firefox is Tab Auto Reload. This add-on works a little differently in that you have to right-click on the tab itself and add a toggle icon to your menu bar.
Once installed, go to Customize and then drag the toggle icon to your menu bar. To refresh a tab, you have to right-click on the tab itself to get the menu options under Reload Tab.
You can disable auto refresh for a page by simply clicking on the toggle icon. If it’s blue and white, that means auto refresh is enabled.
From what I recall, neither of these add-ons will remember the settings for a webpage, meaning if you close the tab and reload the same page, you’ll have to setup the refresh settings again.
Internet Explorer Add-on
For Internet Explorer, there are not very many options. Actually, there was really only one add-on that I could find that was safe to use. It’s pretty old, but it still works in IE 11. Note that as of now, Microsoft Edge does not support extensions or add-ons, so there is nothing available for it.
Once you install Auto IE Refresher, open Internet Explorer and click on the Enable button in order to start using the add-on.
Once enabled, you’ll see a large gray bar appear at the top of the web page. It’s unfortunately very conspicuous and there really isn’t anything you can do about it. It would have been smart to simply use a button, but for whatever reason the developers decided a bar across the screen was better.
Just click on the bar to choose a timing or to pick a custom time interval. You can also set a different refresh interval for different tabs. That’s about all there is to this add-on.
Safari Extension
Finally, there is also one extension for Safari that works well. The Auto Refresh Safari extension is the work of one developer named Andrew Griffin. When you go to install it, you’ll get a message stating this is not a known developer, so just click Continue to install it.
Once installed, you can bring up the refresh toolbar by clicking on the Auto Refresh button.
By default, the time interval is set to 5 seconds, but you can just click in the box and change the value to whatever you like in seconds. Click the Start button and as long as you keep the toolbar visible, you’ll be able to see a countdown to the next refresh.
To hide the toolbar, just click on the button in the navigation bar area. Note that if you are in full-screen mode, the toolbar will disappear unless you move your mouse up to the top of the Safari window.
So those are all the different options you have for automatically refreshing web pages in Chrome, Firefox, IE and Safari. If you have any questions, feel free to comment. Enjoy!
SOURCE:http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/automatically-refresh-web-pages-in-browser/
