I'm trying to set up a custom toolchain where the browser (Firefox or, preferrably, Chrome) is often/frequently/constantly forced to refresh from the commandline.
(The idea is to instantly see the visual changes in the html/webapp I'm editing in an adjacent Emacs frame – without having to constantly tab to the browser to do a manual refresh.)
The closest I've come so far is to run google-chrome FILE_PATH
. However this opens a new tab every time.
Are there other approaches?
Best Answer
Something to play with
It uses xdotool, which lets you script windows/desktop actions. If you supply the name of the browser as an argument, it'll find and reload the current page. You can set a default browser, so you don't need to supply one each time, and you can change whether you send a CTRL-R to reload, or SHIFT-CTRL-R to reload without cache.
It should flip to your browser, reload the page, then flip back to whatever window you called this from. I use this often by putting browser in background, with editor window set to 'ON-TOP' so it's always visible, hot-key this script, or call it from your editor, and it'll return your focus when it's done.
I'm a vim user, and I could see making an autocommand to automatically trigger this script whenever a given file was written, so the browser would refresh when appropriate, I know you can do the same.