[apostacy]

Does anyone know how complicated it would be create a javascript (or something similar) that would click on a button every 10 mins on this website that I'm registered on and report to me (via email?) if there are any changes to the website?

Is this possible and how complicated would it be? I know java and I'm learning PHP.

[Chris O'Brien]

This seems like something that is generally known as a 'security issue'. In order to do it you could have the page inside a frame (or iframe) and have a parent page tell the button you want to click every 10 minutes. However, to do it with javascript, the page you are interacting with (the one inside the frame) would need to be on the same domain i.e. not an external page).

So really, you couldn't do it - as far as i know. I'm not even sure if you could do it with XUL or what-have-you.

Why would you want to do this anyway? Isn't this the sort of thing that spammers do? Anyway - I may be wrong, but I think this is a security thing.

However - reading your post again, it seems your just wanting to see if there are any changes to a web site every ten minutes. Is this right? Subscribing to an RSS feed of the site if it si possible would tell you when anything changes. I don't know. I could show you how to check if things change and send emails using javascript - but only for sites you own....

BTW, java and javascript are completely independent things and not really related. You may know that, but I got the impression from your post that you thought they were one and the same thing.

[BLAZE_MkIV]

How about write a jave app to submit the post event that the button sends, then compare the returned page to the previous one.

[apostacy]

Ok, thanks for the tips so far. Well, this is for a rather benign purpose--I'm trying to get substitute-teaching assignments that seem to be getting snatched up as soon as they are posted. So if I could just leave my email open, for example, I would be notified as soon as a new assignment is posted.

And so this *is* a matter of a webpage's content changing, except it is content that exists on a page that I have to log into and one that I must check for updates by pushing a button every 10 minutes.

Thanks again.

[Arkham_c]

Blaze has the right idea. Forget using a browser. A little shell script can do this pretty easily using curl and diff.