1. Is there a way to make a textarea element appear scrolled to the end of its contents? I have a textarea that shows an activity log where the end will usually be most important to the viewer.

2. Is there a way to make the page refresh the contents of a textarea without re-loading the entire page?

If not, how do I make Javascript load a page every X seconds?

Instead of the text area, make it a iframe that you can refresh using any "vanilla" technique.

Or, consider a java applet.