Let me refresh that for you. | Hacker News Reader

Let me refresh that for you.

letmerefreshthatforyou.com

51 pointsjustindocanto47 comments

Wow, please don't be discouraged by all the negativity. Sure there are plugins and scripts to do this but I, like you, don't like installing many plugins and I'd use this so rarely that I'd forget where the script was by the time I needed it. So having this bookmarked for those odd occasions when I'd use it is the perfect solution.

Furthermore I'd say the current comments exemplify why many like myself no longer share or comment much on HN these days. Say what you will but the quality of discussions is devolving into a big who-can-act-more-jaded-and-know-it-all-ish contest. I'd be willing to bet there are just tons of people who'd want something like this. It's not about "oh there are better solutions" or "more elegant" solutions. It comes down to personal preference and tastes. For every person who's too cool for a browser based solutions there are ten more who'd rather have this than a plugin but don't say anything and just use it.

First, THANK YOU!

Second, yeah... some of the tone seems to be harsh but at the same time the comments do have some valid criticisms in them. Some people DO prefer scripts and hand-coded approaches... but like You & I, some people don't. So, I take it with a grain of salt. (I now appreciate that phrase a little more).

Another demographic I kept in mind aside from coders... is people like my former roommate. She doesn't even know what javascript is and would want a way to just simply check if tickets for her favorite festival finally went on sale (ie. Coachella sold out in 5 minutes this year and she spent a lot of refreshing trying to check on it) so that's also a demographic I was aiming to help.

With all that said... It's not like I'm releasing a product I spent hundreds of hours or hundreds of dollars on, so I'm not entirely crushed if nobody finds it useful. At the same time, it's nice to see somebody else DOES find it useful so I really appreciate the positive feedback.

I hope it gets a few bookmarks and helps some people out. I know my old roommate already has it bookmarked. =)

Most people don't even know what a browser is, let alone how to use plug-ins, so this approach should be better for 99% of people. Great job and great regular solution to a regular problem.

That's true. I said 'browser' to a client on the phone the other day and they asked me what that was. I then had to correct myself and say "Internet Explorer". ;)

Jokes aside... Thank you!

I'm guessing that people who don't know what a browser is don't have a need for such an esoteric tool that enables time-sensitive action.

A bookmarklet containing JS would be exactly what you described.

I like the idea of the OP, but using an iframe is inherently set up for failure.

Reasonable questions a 'non techie' might have: why can't I use this with site X? 'Well, site X blocks I frames.' What's an iframe? Also why can't I use this with site X?

This is true. A bookmarklet would be nice. But, I am not pinterest (who distributes a bookmarklet) or david walsh or anybody that gets tons of traffic so a bookmarklet that I distributed myself would just get lost in the mix... and that wouldn't help anybody.

I also wanted something that had some UI and a little control (ie. the ability to change the timing).

It's not perfect. I know. And you're right... People who know nothing about code, also know nothing about iframes, so there's that.

I'll have to come up with a solution for the iframe issue down the line. Maybe I'll distribute a bookmarklet on this site? =)

> bookmarklet. If you could detect sites that block your I frame, offering the bookmarklet as an alternative is probably the best way to do it.

That's the best 'business case' for changing your approach.

I agree. I'm not really trying to launch a product or make a business out of it, but this would be useful.

I'm thinking my plan of attack would be to check if the sites who blocked the iframes were sending back specific headers that i could detect, then if those headers were detected, i could do a little javascript trickery to show something like "this website does not allow... blah blah blah" and then provide a download link to refresh that website via a bookmarklet.

With that said, I'm not trying to piss anybody off or cause any sys admin nightmares by having tons of people refresh their websites... Idk, I'll revisit the idea when I get there.

Thanks for the suggestion!

But when it does work, this is simpler than a bookmarklet. I wouldn't bother with the bookmarklet because it is rare that I need this. But I hope I remember this url next time I need something auto-reloaded. Since its name is similar to letmegooglethatforyou, there is a good chance I will remember.

i may have slightly piggybacked off the name of that website, hoping it would be a little easier to remember.

How does pointing out non-trivial shortcomings and flaws in implementation equate to being "who-can-act-more-jaded-and-know-it-all-ish?"

The app has issues. There are limits to its usability. There are methods that circumvent these issues that are worth pursuing. Mentioning these things is constructive and worthwhile.

I'm sick of people who refuse to acknowledge the value of criticism.

I'm the guy who made this and I've appreciated every piece of feedback whether blunt, harsh, positive or not. I agree that the app does have issues, though I don't feel right calling it an app. Hootsuite is an app. Klout is an app. This is a 2 hour project that just happened to get some attention.

Cool project! I also use a browser extension for this currently, but the obvious advantage to this is you can use it on any browser immediately as long as you remember the domain name.

One suggestion - it would be a bit more useful if you hid the top bar while it's in "refreshing mode", and made the iframe take up the whole page. You could put a little icon in one of the top corners to reveal it again. I've used tools like this in the past to show analytics and news dashboards, and you typically want to keep as much screen real estate as possible.

I was thinking about that (hiding the toolbar). That's a great idea of making a little icon that lets you return to it. It would also solve the problem I'm having with the extra padding issues on some browsers. I might make that happen on a later date.

And yes, i agree.. it's hard to remember the domain name. If I think of something short and sweet and see that it's available... I'll change it to that. I spent no more than 10 seconds on thinking of a domain name. I figured most people would just boomark it, if they found it useful, since it's not an every day tool... but i get your point. It's always better if you can easily remember the domain name.

Thanks for the feedback!

I actually don't think the domain name is that bad. I was more alluding to my own poor memory for the names of useful apps like this.

It is pretty long for a domain name, but I think I'd remember it thanks to the similarity to http://lmgtfy.com/, commonly used by sarcastic people throughout the web. That was deliberate, right?

I would be lying if i said i didn't have LMGTFY in mind when I choose that domain name.

This feature is built-in to Opera, in case anyone needs to use it regularly.

Right-click any page, and select "Reload Every..." and choose an interval. Very handy.

I use this, when needed

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/auto-reload/ofojbj...

I don't have an issue with this specifically (like apparently a few others do), but I'm wondering if you could walk me through a use-case.

You mention tickets for Coachella. Ok, so I want to go, but I'm waiting for the tickets to go on sale.

If I understand what you've built, I have to sit here watching the page refresh, which means I could just as easily press refresh. What I want to know is has the page changed! Is the action I wanted to take now available. How does your site really resolve that problem?

One thing your reply reminded me of is I wanted to add a "Open in new window" button once you saw your desired result.

So, possible use case is actually something somebody is using it right now for.

My Bloody Valentine (MBV), a band who hasnt released an album in 21 years, is releasing their album tonight. They have a tab open with the website for MBV refreshing every 30 seconds or so.... and check back on that tab on occasion to see if it's live yet! Then once it's live... They'll know they can check it out.

They could also, if they had enough monitor space, like i do, could just have it sitting in the corner of their desktop refreshing away until they see the page change to what they want. That removes all the clicking of refresh, which is why i called it "Let me refresh that for you".

Yes, a script code do the solutions. Yes, you could sit their and click refresh over and over. But that's the point of technology, isn't it? To do things for us better than we could ourselves?

Another use case would be my website went down because it hit the front page of hacker news, and i need to see if it's come back up yet. (this didnt happen, im just giving a more coder oriented example since this is HN).

An unbelievable number of scripts implementing a browser built-in/extension, leading to this (Opera):

  Error
  https://play.google.com/store
  
  The website does not permit its content to be displayed in a frame. It must be displayed in a separate window.

There are definitely better solutions.

I agree there are better solutions but some people dont bother with plugins or scripts and/or just want a simple/quick web-based solution... and that is what this is aimed for.

Also worth noting: I literally spent 2 hours max on it. I know a few people who could use it, myself included, coded it real quick... and then here we are.

How does one set their website to be iframe unfriendly? Intriguing.

The Google Play store tells the browser what framing policy to use with X-Frame-Options (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/HTTP/X-Frame-Option...):

  x-frame-options:SAMEORIGIN

However you could also check for:

  window.top == window

    if (window.top !== window) {
        window.top.location = window.location
    }

It's useful if your website is being iframed to display ads or exploited with cross window communication security holes (old school)

http://i.imgur.com/ePFbiIT.png

Would it be wrong of me to implement on the site to prevent that from happening? haha

It would be cool if you updated the page title to reflect that of the page in the iframe. That way if the page title changes I can see it immediately in the browser tab.

Hmmmmmmmm. I like where you're going with this. Thanks!

Does this work with https sites? I'd like to stop online banking sites from logging me out every few minutes.

I feel like a bad developer for not knowing this answer.

Part of me wants to say yes because it's iframe traffic and independent of my website.

Part of me wants to say no because i dont have a cert for this domain and it might somehow try to communicate via http because of that? or at least cause some flags in your browser?

Either way I'm not sure I personally would trust a random guy (even though I'm pretty trustworthy) having my bank session hanging out in an iframe on his insecure personal project website.

looks like a startup

that's probably because of the bootstrap template.

I'm sure it was a sarcastic remark.

shitty ddos tool? that's the only use I see in this.

That would be a very slow and very inaffective DDOS.

Right, on to registering letmeddosthatforyou.com :D

It's still good for polluting traffic logs and skewing analytics.

You could probably have managed to be a bit more constructive.

What's this for? If I ever need auto-refresh I'll just install an addon or extension. I already can't remember the URL for this. Or if I don't have an addon installed, I could just write a Javascript one-liner in the javascript console.

Like I mentioned on the other comment, i agree that there are better solutions... but sometimes you just need a quick solution to use in the browser.

I, myself, hate plugins & having to copy/paste script or code. I just want to click a bookmark, do what I need to do, and get out. That's why I made this.

You know what'd be cool? If you made this into a plugin too! But then maybe you'd get a lot of "this already exists except better" comments. So maybe if you did that you could just let me know and everyone who's too cool can keep their useless negativity to needlessly criticize someone else.

Isn't a bookmark just as convenient as an addon? Especially with an omnibar/awesomebar?

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