homepage URL

[Chris Gray]

We use WinU from Bardon (www.bardon.com) to try and keep our home page (
http://www.tug-libraries.on.ca ) displayed most of the time. You can set a
default "desk" have the desk time out after a period of idleness (no
mouse/keyboard activity). At time out all running applications are shut
down and WinU logs into the default desk where Netscape is set to be
launched at desk login. 

It works but there are things I'm not happy with. Netscape 4.05 is so big
that it shuts down and starts up slowly. I don't think WinU allows enough
time for this cycle to happen and so we get a condition where an idle
machine ends up with many copies of Netscape running. This problem reaches
epidemic proportions when there is a network problem (for example, our
proxy server gets hung up for a few minutes) and Netscape can't connect to
the home page.

There was also concern about overtaxing the web server and the server logs
with a library full of idle machines hitting the home page once every 8
minutes.

Chris Gray
Computer Systems Technician
Library Systems
University of Waterloo

On Tue, 28 Jul 1998, Higgins, Caroline wrote:

> Has anyone figured out a way to force Netscape to return to a 
> given URL after a certain amount of time has passed?  If not, what
> about auto shut-down and restart of Netscape (4.05)?
> 
> TIA for suggestions.
> 
> Caroline Higgins
> 
> 
> **********************
> Caroline Higgins                                               
> Supervisor of Automation                                 
> University of Houston-Downtown Library          
> higginsc at dt.uh.edu                                         
> (713) 221-8467                    
> **********************                         
>