Getting visitor browsers to load most current page

[cmtomasetti]

Hi,

I'm new to writing HTML code and have 2 quick questions, both of which I'm guessing are pretty easy but again I'm new so please forgive me.

I'm working on updating my employers web page, but i notice that once it is uploaded online that I have to make sure I refresh my browser to view the updated page. My concern is that if a returning customer goes to view the website and their browser loads the cached information that they will assume the page has not been updated and leave. Is there any code I can use to force a viewers browser to load the most current page?

Second question is if I have a link, how can i specify that it open in a new window with a certain size. I know that <a href="url" target="_blank"></a> should open the link in another window but firefox and chrome keep opening tabs. and is there a way to specify the size of the window?

Thanks,

Chris

[coldfire421]

You can use the javascript window.open method to load your new page in a separate window, something like this....

window.open ("myPage.html","myNewWindow");

myNewWindow is the instance name of your new pop-up window while the myPage is very descriptive obviously its the link..

1 thing you should know is some other browser load the new window in a tab (not a pop-up) but if you want to make it pop-up try to put extra property on your new window, something like this

window.open ("myPage.html","myNewWindow"","menubar=1,resizable=1,width=350,height=250");

Okay hope it helps you...

[cmtomasetti]

Thanks that helps with getting the link to open in a new window.

Do you know of anyway to stop a returning visitors browser from loading the outdated page version that is cached in the browser?

[Eye for Video]

You could try no cache method:
http://www.codeave.com/html/code.asp?u_log=5080
or...
You might look into using a techique similar to that used to update news tickers. That is, require a time and date be appended onto the file name each time it is loaded... thus, never looking in the cache for the old version. Something like this:

xmlData.load("news_ticker.xml?blarg="+new Date().getTime());

Perhaps you could adapt somthing like that to sections of the page that get frequent updates.
Best wishes,
Eye for Video
www.cidigitalmedia.com

[iwin3]

I don't quite get what you're saying, but if visitors go to the webpage, it should be the newest version.

hope I helped,

Chris