Automatic Redirection Tests and Firefox

 Mikael Willberg

 6.12.2010 English Projects · Hacking Bug · Software

There are few tricky ways to make a browser to refresh a page or to go to a different page, immediately or after certain interval. Doing this is generally not recommended: Meta tags - Webmaster Tools (google.com) and HTML Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (w3c.org).

One valid use is when author can not make web server to send proper status redirection and uses meta refresh to achieve same result. In real life this is quite often used bounce user away or force advertisements. More to read: URL redirection (wikipedia.org)

Here you can test how your browser will react. All tests will try to redirect browser back to this page.

• HTTP Refresh
• HTTP Refresh with 5 second delay
• Meta Refresh
• Meta Refresh with 5 second delay

Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox has a feature which allows user to be alerted when the redirection is about to happen and wether to proceed. This can be enabled with advanced config editor.

In 9.9.2009 I reported an issue with this feature accessibility.blockautorefresh does not detect "refresh" HTTP header (mozilla.org).

Update 1.1.2011

The problem still exists with Firefox 3.6.13 and 4.0b8.