Firefox Auto-Reload

Do you ever watch
an item on auction sites, such as WorldStart or Ebay, and wait until it
gets down to only minutes left to decide if you want to bid or not? Or
how about any Web site in which you tend to hit the Refresh button every
couple of minutes so you can see the updated page? After awhile, on auction
sites especially, when it gets down to the bid time, it doesn't always
refresh all the information you need. Fortunately, Firefox has some great
add ons that can help you keep pages fresh and up to date.

One add on, Tab
Mix Plus (TMP), is one that enhances the tabbed browsing feature of
Firefox. It allows you to undo tabs you may have accidentally closed and
it also has a session manager, which can restore Firefox back to a previous
state if it ever closes unexpectedly. It also has features I couldn’t
live without, namely auto-reload.

Once you've download
TMP, make your way to the Options menu, click on the
Menu icon at the top and then click on the Main Context
Menu tab, as shown below. These options can all be added or removed
from the context menu, which comes up when you right click anywhere in
the white space of the page. Do not right click over an image, as a different
menu will pop up. Make sure the option of “Reload Every”
is checked and then click OK.

You will now be able
to right click and set the auto-reload rate. Next, click anywhere in the
white space of the page and the menu shown below should appear. Notice
that now, you should have “Reload Every” as a pull out menu.
Move your mouse over it and the menu will be shown. There are some predefined
amounts of time already set, which makes it easy to use. First, you’ll
want to make sure that Enable is checked (a). Then you
can choose the amount of time between reloads. If you want all the tabs
in Firefox to reload at that rate, simply click on Enable All
Tabs (c). That way, you don’t have to set every tab’s
rate.

If you would like
to set your own reload rate, simply click on Custom (b)
and the menu shown below will appear. This helps if you want to have some
tabs reloading an odd number of seconds, as all the presets are multiples
of five.

TMP contains many
different features that, when played with, allow you to customize Firefox
to your liking. If you are only looking for a certain feature, you can
always search the Mozilla
Firefox add on site for what you want. Have fun!