Firefox plugin to update document after file saved

I like how CSS edit has a live preview which updates after you edit a CSS file. I've been doing similar with Firebug and tweaking CSS however that is only temporary. I usually edit files in Textmate than cmd+tab to the browser and cmd+r to refresh.

I was wondering if it would be possible to have Firefox watch CSS files in a document, and update the document when they get saved? This would mirror the CSS edit live preview functionality and eliminate the need for an extra app. Not sure how the plugin would have to work, this is just daydreaming.

Thanks a lot if you have any ideas

MachineElf

Posted 2011-03-03T17:49:51.703

Reputation: 223

Answers

Its not automatic, but you might look at CSS Reloader. Gives you a keyboard command to only refresh the CSS.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/css-reloader/

Nate

Posted 2011-03-03T17:49:51.703

Reputation: 729

Holding down the right-Shift key while clicking on the Reload button should cause the CSS to be reloaded (and everything else that's cached). – Randolf Richardson – 2011-03-03T18:27:31.940

Many thanks Nate, I think this is the closest it's going to get. Would be cool if there was a plugin that could watch a file and update automatically to save the tabbing and refreshing, maybe I'll suggest it to the plugin developer. – MachineElf – 2011-03-03T21:11:11.873

Yes, at least on Windows (I presume other OSes as well) there is the FileSystemWatcher API, which provides a way to do just that, call a method when a file changes. – Nate – 2011-03-03T21:16:59.903

Opera can do something like this -- right-click on the web page, select "Reload every..." and choose the number of seconds (or specify a custom time period in seconds, minutes, hours, etc.).

Opera
http://www.opera.com/

Be sure to test your code in the major web browsers. An alphabetical list of the free ones can be found here:

Resource - Web browsers
http://www.lumbercartel.ca/resources/web-browsers.pl

Randolf Richardson

Posted 2011-03-03T17:49:51.703

Reputation: 14 002

Nice function! Yeah I test in all the browsers but develop mostly in Firefox. – MachineElf – 2011-03-03T21:12:07.863