browser caching issue

Poster: tony
Dated: Sunday January 26 2003 - 22:27:30 GMT

Hi folks

When I upgraded to IE6, I realised that this issue which I had previously only seen in Opera might be more important - namely:

IE6 (unlike IE4) caches lots of stuff, including the menuarray.js file. The result of this is that if you are adding, from time to time, new pages to the menu, previous site visitors returning to your site will get the old version of the menu, and not find new pages.

My question therefore is:

How long might a browser continue to use the cached version of menuarray.js? If, let's say, a user returns to the site every week, will that continued usage of the menuarray.js file prevent it finally dropping out of the cache and keep it current indefinitely. Or will it find itself replaced after a reasonable time period.

Alternatively, will a meta tag restrcting caching be any use. I see it has been suggested that IE does not take note of these anyway, without some trickery.


http://sites.encompassnow.com/idude/art ... erride.asp

You wouldn't of course want a total no cache tag on a site, otherwise it would be slower to use (graphics etc) and presumably returns to previous pages would also be no longer instant. but perhaps something like

<meta http-equiv="Expires" content="Tue, 20 Aug 2002 14:25:27 GMT" >
could be used? Though if IE won't recognise it (as mentioned on above link), may not be worth it.

Thanks and best wishes

Tony