Browser Refresh Automation (XRefresh)

I normally don’t review programs that I have downloaded, but I feel XRefresh is one of those programs that will make your web development work flow that much faster.

The sole purpose of XRefresh is to refresh the browser as you modify source files. I hope you can see the benefits of this. The following are the steps you take to get it working:

1. Download XRefresh (requires firebug)
2. Once installed, you tell XRefresh which folders you want it to monitor.
3. You open up your local file (PHP/HTML) in the browser as well as in your code editor of choice
4. Change something in your file, and save it.
5. Go back to your browser and it should have automatically refreshed. It does this by detecting the save commands!

The main purpose for this is when coding PHP locally you can have it automatically refresh to save you the same of switching windows all the time. Save what you’re doing in the IDE… look at the other monitor and have your change. No need to ALT-TAB and then hit Refresh!

One problem I have seen so far is that if you are changing a CSS file, something goes wonky with the images. If you have a solution for this please share it in the comments!

I recommend you get this software and try it out for yourself. Let me know what you think of it in the comments.

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Written by Brenley Dueck