Develop Reference

periodically reload tab and bring to front

I have a requirement where a few users are required to keep a watch over a dashboard browser page.
My first thought was use some javascript magic that reloads the page, switches to it if it is not active and being the browser window to front. I quickly realized how difficult this (accept for reload) is and that browsers do everything possible to prevent it, with good reason.
On the other hand, I have err, seen some "websites" which show a pop-up telling me that my browser is affected and I need to call the given 800 number. These pop-ups are pretty much impossible to kill. I could use that if I knew how.
I have also considered utilities like ergociser which sit in the taskbar and open a browser window periodically. This could work but it opens a new pop-up window every time, while I am keen to reload it in the same window.
The closest I have come so far is to use alert which does not bring the window to front but it does flash the taskbar.
I am thinking of a chrome extension or firefox add-on that brings named pop-up tab. But I am open to any other ideas. It can be a browser specific solution, and it is ok to require white-listing in pop-up blockers
What is a best way to do this?
UPDATE
There are two close votes for "Too Broad". It is true that I am looking for the right technology to use for this problem, so I cannot refine it with technology-specific details. But short of that, appreciate if someone can give suggestion for narrowing down the problem statement.

Moving XUL window

I'm working on an app, which is based on Firefox and what I need to build is an in-app password manager. I'm planning to populate it once and hide it from view outside of the window frame, bringing it in-frame when it is needed. Now, I have read about the rules applied to moveTo, namely
"You can't move a window or tab that wasn’t created by window.open.
You can't move a window or tab when it’s in a window with more than one tab."
I was wondering if there are any exceptions to that rule? I have full access to chrome, so I was wondering if there's some more low-level way to achieve the moveTo form there?
Thanks a lot!

The restrictions of window.moveTo() don't apply to code running with system privileges. I just tried typing top.moveTo(-1000, 0) into the Error Console - it moved the window off-screen, something that unprivileged code isn't allowed to do. Still, opening the window off-screen is not possible as far as I know (you can however move it in a load event handler, when the window is still invisible). Also, the task manager still shows that window - it is possible to Alt-Tab to it, then press Alt-Space and choose "Move" from that system menu (that's on Windows).

window.open() in IE 9

when i try to
window.open()
in IE 9 , it opens it with favorites sidebar (if it was present in parent window) this is behaviour unique to IE , and it breaks dialog windows as I envisioned them. Any hope to fix that?

Since you specified that you're using this for a dialog, I feel I should discourage this. Using window.open() is not ideal for creating dialog boxes.
Some browsers will ignore your 'new window' request, and open it as a new tab. This can be configured by the browser user, so is out of your control.
If the user has toolbars and side panels open, there's a strong likelyhood of them showing up in the new window, which will mangle your layout. Again, you'll need to test this in every browser, and even then you can't be sure without knowing all the config options that might affect it.
Opening a new window does not give you a modal dialog box. You can't prevent the user from clicking back to the parent window and ignoring the dialog box.
Therefore, if you want to make a dialog box, you would be much better off using a javascript library that opens a box inside the current page. It's much more flexible, and gives you much more control over the end result than window.open().
If you're using JQuery, you might want to start by looking here: http://choosedaily.com/1178/15-jquery-popup-modal-dialog-plugins-tutorials/, but there are stacks of others available (it's a very easy thing to write, especially in JQuery, so there's plenty of plugins out there you can try till you find one which is perfect for you)

Try changing it to window.location.href= 'url + target="_blank"'

Creating new tab / switching between Tabs in Firefox?

I am looking for a way to improve the workflow in a PHP based CMS. There is a lot of switching between the editor mode and the preview mode of the page. The editor mode is huge to load, and so I would like to open the preview mode in a different window.
I don't want to use new windows or an iframe within the current window to keep the workflow simple and to avoid confusion.
Is there a way to explicitly open a new tab (not window), and to jump to that tab from a document, in Firefox? The number of users is limited, so there is the possibility to set up the client with the necessary extensions / permissions.
I know Firefox can be forced to open all links in tabs, but I think that won't cut it, as I still can't address and focus the newly opened window.
Thanks for all the great answers everyone. I have now enough material to decide whether I'll take the greasemonkey approach, rely on the user to set up "open in tabs" and address the window by name, or use a "inline" HTML solution as so many of you suggested. I am accepting the answer that I feel went most effort into.

There is no way to force a window to open as a tab. It's all dependent on the user's preference settings.

I second the answers that say you should do this in HTML using Javascript. Then it can work in all browsers that support JS.
I would put two divs on the page and show/hide each div depending on which tab is selected. If you are clever about this you could trap the click on the tab and determine if the user left-clicked or middle-clicked. If they left click you load that tab on the page. If they middle-click you let the browser open a new tab/window (according to the user's prefs, don't try to force it), and leave the current window unchanged (that is, don't switch to the new tab). The action for clicking on the tab would be to use AJAX to load the contents of the remote document and put it into the tab. Use Javascript to modify the URL before submitting the AJAX request so that the server knows to send a web page fragment instead of the whole page.
The advantage of this dual-natured solution is that the tabbed approach will work the way you want it to work for the majority of cases, but for users with, say, two screens, or who prefer switching between browser tabs, they will still have the flexibility to work in multi-window mode. This can all be done without any browser extensions and it should work equally well in IE as well as Firefox, Opera, etc. Avoid locking yourself into one browser, even one as excellent as Firefox. One day a customer will need to use Opera or Safari and you'll be stuck.

You say you don't want to use an iframe to avoid confusion. Now I don't know about the layout of your website, but I've been using the approach that the editor opens in its own div right next to the content being edited and the content is being live updated as you edit. No need to change tabs.
(If the window is too narrow there are HTML tabs Edit and Preview)
It does not seem to add confusion to the user and for me this approach works really well. Maybe it's worth considering in your case.

What about using iframes and JavaScript?
I know you said you want to avoid 'confusion using iframes', but in my opinion if you really need to load different pages at the same time this is the best option.
In theory, you could create your own tab system using javascript or even better, using jQuery, because its UI module offers pretty cool tab control.
For every tab you could load separate "headerless-footerless" version of your specific admin page inside <iframe> element. If user wanted to modify something different, he will simply click on the tab and bring different iframe.
All this could also be done using AJAX, but iframe solution is quite easy as you just need to load ready page and all postbacks are already handled by original page and separated from master-admin-page.
You might also need to play a little bit to set correct height of your iframe to fit all the content without scrollbars, but this again, is just bit of javascript.

Nope, there's no way to force the opening of a new tab, simply because this would be unsupported by un-tabbed browsing
You can only set it to open a new window, not a new tab.

Greasemonkey springs to mind - a quick google gives open in tabs on left click. I think you could modify that so it only runs on one particular page, and you'd be up up and away.

This question made me wonder if HTML 5 allows that sort of specification, and it doesn't (nothing in one of the other hyperlink attributes, either). A new browsing context is a new browsing context, there's no way to express a preference for tab over window or foreground over background.

You can't force a tab, but if you use a target with a specific name, like target="my_cms_window", many browsers will open this as a new tab. Additionally, they will remember the name and if you use the target repeatedly, put the contents in the same tab. I have found that this works pretty well in the real world.

modeless window to behave like a modal window using javascript

I have a requirement to have some modal popups appear on a webpage. At first i implemented them as true modal windows, but then i found out that true modal windows cannot communicate with parent window in IE.
Now i am trying to implement them as regular windows that always steal focus, which is sorta working.
Here is the code that i am using:
modalPopup = window.open(url, 'popup', arr.join(",")); //use a global var here
modalPopup.focus();
$(window).bind("focus.modal", function(){
if(modalPopup){
modalPopup.focus();
} else {
$(window).unbind("focus.modal");
}
});
There are several things wrong with this:
In firefox, once i close the popup, the modalPopup does not become null, it points to parent window. (this is ok, since we dont support firefox anyway)
In IE, it works like a charm when you open 1 window and close it, but opening any more windows results in the exception:
Error: The callee (server [not server application]) is not available and disappeared; all connections are invalid. The call did not execute.
edit: In IE the error happens when modalPopup.focus(); is called. apparently modalPopup is never set to a falsy value when closed :P
Can you help me write a better implementation that uses window.open for creating the popups?
Before anyone says anything, using lightbox is not an option. The popup windows contain A TON of html, javascript etc, and loading them in the DOM is not going to result in a good UX. Also, we sorta have to have this work on IE6.

The windows containing a "ton" of JavaScript, HTML, etc. isn't a reason that you can't use "lightbox" style techniques (which do work on IE6; I don't know if a specific library you've looked at doesn't). The technique is simple:
Have an absolutely-positioned iframe on the page whose z-index is higher than any other content normally shown on the page. Normally the iframe is hidden.
When doing a "modal," show that iframe and set it to cover all other content. Create an absolutely-positioned div with a higher z-index than the iframe and place it wherever you want (typically in the middle of the viewport).
Put your "modal" content in that div. This can be pre-loaded, or you can demand-load JavaScript and other resources to fill it.
Have a UI control of some sort on the div that "closes" it by removing the div and hiding the iframe.
You can build very rich UIs with this that (can) have a dramatically better UX than enforced multiple windows. And you have the advantage of avoiding cross-windows communication and potentially offering much better response time to the user when they "open" one of these windows.