Ok .. well i am shure most of you here have a daily break with web-designing. And one problem I can think of while doing this is that , When we hit the refresh button and want to see the changes made, the browser :

1) Either takes time ..
2) Doesnt update the content

Possible reason for this is obviously Mr. Cache ! .. Saying this .. I bet most of you Delete the cache and try to access the website again. But Sometimes it STILL doesnt update .. So here'z the alternative "Only FireFox" lol .. I wouldent bother much with IE, but if anyone finds something like this please do post it here.

There are 2 ways you can force your browser to NOT save / Show updated webpages.

1) Tools > Options ... > Under the Cache Tab : Hit Clear Cache Now & and Change your Cache Value to 0 MB.
2) Hold the Shift Key and hit the refresh button on the FireFox tool Bar.

I guess most of you already know this ?? .. and Yeah in IE .. i havent tried out, but if you change the cache size to 0 MB, it should work there too. Hopefully ! ..

Regards
Dhanesh.



This post has been edited by dhanesh: Aug 8 2006, 02:28 AM

Yeah, I have already tried setting cache to zero, but for some reason, Firefox continues to save the cache. Then I tried what you suggested and hit shift + refresh, and everything miraculously worked. Cache on Opera is even more annoying--Opera managed to save cache for over a month. That's just scary--if a visitor of my website was using Opera, they probably would never be able to see an updated version until after a month or until after they clear cache. ><

In IE I have also tried changing cache to zero, but apparently that too does not work. It's the same problem as Firefox--the browser doesn't listen to you and continues to store cache.

Ahhh the forceful methods .. I guess if you Set it to 0 and then Clear Cache, It probably might work. But i dont gurantee that cause I havent tried it out. Happy to know that the Shift + Refresh Trick works for all .. finally people will start using FireFox for good !

Regards
Dhanesh.

i also have that problem but most of the time it was ISP side who creates cache of the sites i visited.. i hate them totally.. that is why i change ISP..

sometimes that cache is irritating.. on the early days of firefox.. it uses cache.. it totally mess my life well.. so i use mozilla.. and things work well..

on IE.. i totally hate that browser.. it turned my life into hell.. i have already cleared all but it still loads an old version of the site.. when i checked what is going on.. my copy of IE is loading pages from temp folders..

plus it is trying to create an offline version of the page.. and loads all data from the offline page..


------
i remembered myself using the old mosaic just to check emails.. irritating..

Actually, as soon as I install Firefox anywhere, I set the cache limit to 0 for this reason. Cache can be good sometimes, other times, it's worthless.

unless you're on AOL, then all of it in general is worthless because they have a HUGE proxy farm!

[N]F

Hmm, just curious . Does Proxy play a role in cache ? I go through a proxy, and its annoying (leaving out the cache part), but then if cache too plays a role in this then .. err whats the point ? Cant we ask for it ?

Regards
Dhanesh.

yeah.. some proxies use cache.. this speeds up the download and display but some proxies are set up in a dumb manner that is forces you to see the cache and not the live site..

i have used a proxy some time ago.. it was a nice setup.. it checks if the current website changes and creates a cache version.. if the cache looks different from the live one.. it will redirect you to the live site..

there was a flaw in it however.. if you are browsing a site with one dynamic page.. [a php page or like].. and the rest are plain html.. it you visit the php page first.. then the static html's.. all page data will be loaded from the live site..

nice though.. since that is the only flaw i have encountered.. too bad the server was abused by spammers.. it was now blocked on some websites so i stop using it..

Well, if you want to fix this problem and that the cache thing would work on all the standard browsers, you have to send the right headers using php or any other language, apache has the default headers and the browsers has the default way how to cache the websites, also there are some preferences.. You really can find a lot of good sites which would teach you how to send the right headers, for example IPB has no problems with cache on the dynamic pages, on the archive they cache, you can control the browser, so why not do it? It is the way it should be done, like if you only put a html file and the apache default is to cache it for 30 days, when it will cache it for 30 days, that is just plain old simple, php pages are usually set differently..If not headers are sent, the browser has its own method how to cache.. Ok, I think I said what I wanted

Here is a simple example code from the php manual:



There are a lot of things you can do with browsers using headers, just be sure to use the right way and test on all the browsers and try to search google for more information everytime. To end - Caching is good if you know how to control it, besides it saves bandwidth.

Nice Tip Quatrux .. I had seen this while on my way to find this FireFox Option. Its a nice way to not cache pages, but useful for small sites. I mean practically any site admin nowadays is concerned more about the bandwidth usage than Disk usage lol. So in that case "no-cache" wouldent be advisable. Every time a user would access your page, your bandwidth is used to the max, just like a first time user to your site would do.

My site has a weird 7000+ hits per month, not counting the bots .. so in that case, if i had used "no-cache" in my header, by now my account would have been suspended.


Regards
Dhanesh.

A good way to diagnose this is to use a cacheless fetch program like wget to grab the raw page. If the wget-fetched page is out of date, you know it isn't the local cache that's the problem. wget does not cahce, does not interpret, and generally doesn't screw anything up. I find that wget is a generally invaluable tool for web development. It can be difficult to fetch a particular dynamic page with wget, but you can send parameters and I have written fairly sophisticated unit tests with it. Simple Perl scripts work too.