Automatically Refresh a Page Using JavaScript or Meta Tags

By David Walsh on January 14, 2008

I try to steer clear of modifying a page without the user triggering the change, much less automatically refresh or redirect a page. There are times when automatically refreshing the page is important, like when you pull up game play-by-play pages on NFL.com or ESPN.com. Whatever your reason for automatically refreshing the page, keep one thing in mind: auto-refresh only pages that have little interaction -- nothing more than a click.

The JavaScript Method

var timer = null;
function auto_reload()
{
	window.location = 'http://domain.com/page.php';
}

	
	 <body onload="timer = setTimeout('auto_reload()',10000);">

The META Tag Method

The following refreshes the page every 30 seconds.

<head>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="30" />
</head>

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Discussion

Ed Burrow
I use a refresh feature in Firefox 3.0 (it’s an add-in) that allows me to set a refresh time for a page from 30 secs to unlimited minutes. I was wondering if you know of a program or add-in for IE7 (and now IE8) that would allow me to do same kind of thing.

Thanks

WldHogn
vishal
hi i am trying to reset counter after time interval and restart automatically. your code runs properly but it will post back if i want to avoid postback then what to do…
thanku
Mounica
hi…..

In my project the cascading style sheet is not working properly. So i thought of onload page refresh . So, can u please help me out with some code or any other stuff that gonna work properly please……….

thank you…
Dhirendra Kumar Sharma
wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
Fabricebreizh
Wow. Simple and works fine.

Thanks a lot
Saqib
Nice and gud ……… ur code is working ……
thanksssssss
Yoer
Could this script to change alexa rank ?