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