I've seen some OPACs with a "you are about to be logged out" popup.
The LC does this.

I'd think it would be easy to write a JS that simply refreshes the
page, reinvigorating the session.

All of this is idiotic and childish, of course. The only non-library
website I visit now that times out at all is my bank, and it waits
longer than my library does.

Tim

On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 3:34 PM, Joe Hourcle
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Mar 2008, Jay Roos wrote:
>
>  > Whenever I decide whether to link from our catalog to something external, I
>  > always want to know how I bring the patron back once they've found something
>  > they're interested in. Do you have or have you considered a way to close the
>  > loop and bring someone who followed a link in the catalog back to the
>  > catalog?
>
>  One of the few useful things that came from that whole HTML Frames
>  confusion was the ability to specify a 'target' to links.  if you use a
>  target name that's not an existing frame, it'll pop up in a new window.
>  (without requiring javascript to handle the popup).  if you use a
>  consistent name, it'll recycle the existing window:
>
>         <a href='some_url' target='LibraryThing'>some text</a>
>
>  See the HTML specs for more details:
>         http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/present/frames.html#h-16.3
>
>
>  There are also some common keywords to use (_top, _blank, _new), which are
>  widely supported, but I can't find them in the HTML docs.
>
>  ...
>
>  so basically -- someone clicks on the link, it comes in a new window, and
>  they can close the window to return to where they were.
>
>  ... the issue with sessions timing out still holds, but as the catalog is
>  still loaded, you might be able to do something with javascript to warn
>  the user that they might time out.
>
>  -Joe
>



--
Check out my library at http://www.librarything.com/profile/timspalding