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Technical Methods to detect the date of a webpage. Some webpages have no date. You'll look in vain for a copyright, revision or update stamp.When this happens you'll need a detective's mind set to ferret out any publication date information. There are technical methods to help you find out the date that the page was last changed on the server. When you can't find copyright, revision, or update information, these methods can be useful. However, it is important to understand that the modification date will change when even a minor tweak is made on the page. |
Finding Modification Dates with Internet Explorer:
Do not rely on the properties page in Internet Explorer. You will be mislead, since the created and modified dates will always be today's date, rather than the publication date.
However most webservers can be persuaded to send you update information...if you ask the right way!You can extract the date information when using Internet Explorer by entering a javascript code in the Address Box of the browser when the page is displayed.
Just click in the Address Box, erase the current URL and paste in this code.
javascript:alert(document.lastModified)
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1) Select the URL in the Address Box. Lets demonstrate this technique using the ALA Issues and Advocacy Page. We have solid date of publication information because the ALA supplies a copyright date at the bottom of the page That date reads 2004. By using this technique we can get an even more accurate date!
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2) Paste in the script. Replace the URL in the Address Box with the javascript. You can type in the script or paste in the script. When you hit enter this script will fetch the date of the most recent change to this page. |
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3) Detect the Date! After hitting enter, the most current server based update is revealed. We see that the date is about mid-year 2004. This helps us establish the freshness or currency of the page we are evaluating. |
Authored by Lora K. Kaisler and Dennis O'Connor