How to reload/refresh a web page without leaving my web development IDE?

Question

Building Websites

When I build websites I use 2 monitors. I have my development IDE on the main monitor and the web page open on the secondary screen.

I get annoyed that everytime I need to refresh the web page I have to go to my mouse, move over to the other screen and click refresh.

I would like to have a shortcut key mapped to reloading the web page whenever I need. In a similar way to how Winamp maps keys to common functions like play/pause etc.

My current research:

Firefox via Command Line

I have discovered that an existing FireFox process can be controled from the command line, however the best it can do is create a new window with a specific URL.

firefox -remote "openURL(www.mozilla.org, new-tab)"

The documentation is here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Command_Line_Options

Reload Every

There is also a firefox extension that will refresh the web page periodically. However this results in a constant flickering of the page and will also be wasteful with resources.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/115/

However, what I really need is either....

• A customisable global hotkey for Firefox/Chrome to reload current selected tab
• A browser extension that could be fired from a Global Hotkey
• A command to reload the current selected tab from the Command Line that I could then map to a hotkey (is it possible to add extra remote command with an extentsion?)

Does anyone know how I could do this? Thanks!

Answer 1

In Windows XP, this should work:

• Create a VBS file called refresh.vbs:

  Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell") 
  WshShell.AppActivate("Firefox")
  WshShell.SendKeys "{F5}"
  WshShell.AppActivate("TextPad")
  

• Create a shortcut to this file on your desktop.

• Right-click the shortcut icon and go to Properties.

  • In the General tab, click on the Change button next to "Opens with". Browse to C:\WINDOWS\system32\cscript.exe Select Microsoft Console Based Script Host.

  • In the Shortcut tab, enter a Shortcut key e.g CTRL + ALT + R. In the Run dropdown, select Minimised.

Now, when you hit CTRL + ALT + R, it will refresh the current tab in Firefox.