HOW TO disable automatic META tag refresh/redirect through your browser

What may be a feature in a web application to some, may be intrusive or offending to others. For instance, the timed redirect/refresh using the META tag feature may sometimes be a hindrance.

Browsers are supposed to allow users to control all timeouts
, but Firefox 2 and lower do not provide a way to control timed redirects. Opera & IE allow you to control it.

This post by Ben Buchanan shows how to disable meta refresh:

* Opera: browse to opera:config#UserPrefs|ClientRefresh, then de-select the option and restart Opera
OR
you can go to Preferences > Advanced > Network and unchecked "Enable automatic redirection"
* Firefox: you can wait for version three, or install the Web Developer's Toolbar and click Disable > Disable Meta Redirects.
OR
use the Firefox extension RefreshBlocker to blacklist or whitelist web-sites which have redirect/refresh implemented with the META tag . I tested it on Firefox 2 and it worked fine for me.
* In Internet Explorer: go to Tools > Internet options > Security tab > Custom Level button > Miscellaneous category > set "Allow META REFRESH" to Disable.

I noticed that while Opera & the Firefox extension RefreshBlocker gave an indication that automatic redirection was blocked, IE 6 blocked the redirection/refresh but just gave a blank page.

Update (2-Sep-2010):

The above ways of blocking META tag refreshes remain unchanged in newer versions of Opera & IE.

This feature is now available natively in Firefox  (I tested in ver 3.6). Go to Tools > Options.. and in the Advanced section's General tab, check the "Warn me when web sites try to redirect or reload the page" checkbox in the Accessibility panel.

Currently, Chrome does not natively support any settings to block META reloads nor are there any related Extensions. I tried out a few Greasemonkey scripts to block META-based redirects (that were possibly meant for Firefox) but they did not work for me

Also see:
HOW to continuously refresh any web-page in IE8 & Firefox

Comments

  1. Can we do this action of disable meta tags in latest Firefox version that is Firefox 15?

    ReplyDelete

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