Auto Recent Changes

The following in a text file will refresh RecentChanges every five minutes.

 <HTML>
  <HEAD>
  <TITLE>Refreshes every five minutes</TITLE>
  <META NAME="Description" CONTENTS="Refreshes Newest every five minutes" 
  http-equiv="refresh" content="300"
  ></META>
  </HEAD>
  <FRAMESET>
   <FRAMESET ROWS="*">
    <FRAME NAME="f1" SRC="http://c2.com/cgi/quickChanges?days=.05">
   </FRAMESET>
  </FRAMESET>
 </HTML>

To view a link use the "open in new window" option of the browser or the opened page may refresh while reading.

But use of such a technique is highly discouraged. It puts unnecessary load on Ward's server, and encourages a view of Wiki as some sort of news source. Wiki is a lousy news source, although it has other strengths. Try browsing, or even READING Wiki instead of watching recent changes so closely and you'll learn a lot more.

[If one is a RecentChangesJunkie one looks at Wiki changes not as a news source, but for the value one gets out of Wiki, whatever that may be. Such an individual typically manually refreshes frequently anyway. Use of the meta tag would not add more load than what they do with the mouse anyway. It is unlikely hundreds of people will use meta tag all of a sudden but for those of us who think automation is a good thing it just another option. If load is a concern set it for a longer refresh duration. Perhaps c2 will offer an RssFeed? one day soon.]

If you use OperaBrowser, you can just right click and choose "Reload Every" and a time.

If you use MozillaBrowser, save the recent changes page as a bookmark. Select "Manage Bookmarks", highlight the recent changes bookmark, click "Properties" and go to the "Schedule" tab, where you can set the refresh interval and notification method that you prefer.

It looks to me like that HTML code will title the page "Refreshes every 60 seconds", actually refresh every 5 minutes, and grab 72 minutes worth of changes. Perhaps we should OnceAndOnlyOnce the time interval?