Which browser to write for??

[Alan J. Flavell]

I'm only casually familiar with caching mechanisms in general but
this statement surprised me because I've been having a bit of
trouble with Firefox and caching. Whenever I change/update a page
on my site and then open it with FF, I always seem to get the old
version. None of my pages have any explicitly-stated caching
directives, meta or otherwise. Sure, I can manually reload the page
and _then_ get the new version, but this shouldn't be necessary.
I've checked in Firefox's "tools" menu and didn't see anything that
might address the issue.

Any thoughts?

It worries me that so many useful settings that are present in the UI
of Mozilla/Seamonkey, have been ripped out of Ff. Short of finding an
extension which does what you want, one needs to resort to
manipulating about:config, if you can work out what the values mean.

If you try about:config, I predict you will find that
browser.cache.check_doc_frequency is set to 3, which apparently means
"check when the page is out of date". A value of 1 here would mean
"Check every time", which might be what you want.

Other values which can be discerned in Seamonkey seem to be 2 meaning
"never" and 0 meaning "once per session". AFAICT and YMMV.

Alternatively, you can install Pederick's web developer, and use it to
disable the cache while you are doing web development.

h t h

 

[Michael Winter]

To further the education of mankind, Michael Winter

That statement isn't meant to be as absolute as it appears, above.

[snip]

Whenever I change/update a page on my site and then open it with FF,
I always seem to get the old version. None of my pages have any
explicitly-stated caching directives, meta or otherwise.
[snip]

Any thoughts?

Not particularly, but I've never had that problem, and it's difficult to
diagnose remotely. So, we'll start with the obvious (I'll apologise now
for asking anything too obvious), and go from there.

What doesn't get updated? Document content? The style sheet?

Have you checked your server logs to determine if a request was sent?
What about the response headers to ensure that validators (both ETag and
Last-Modified) have changed from their previous values after the update?

Mike

 

[Neredbojias]

To further the education of mankind, "frederick"

Have you explored the myriad of different options available by typing
in "about:config" in the address bar?

Yuk! I wanted something where I really didn't have to think...

Note that knowing what all the bells and whistles do requires a bit of
Googling, and some options are only detailed after they've been
explicity set by the user.

Oh, okay <grump,grumble,whine />. I guess I'll hafta go and do it.

(Seriously, thanks, and see my reply to Alan.)

 

[Neredbojias]

To further the education of mankind, "Alan J. Flavell"

It worries me that so many useful settings that are present in the UI
of Mozilla/Seamonkey, have been ripped out of Ff. Short of finding an
extension which does what you want, one needs to resort to
manipulating about:config, if you can work out what the values mean.

If you try about:config, I predict you will find that
browser.cache.check_doc_frequency is set to 3, which apparently means
"check when the page is out of date". A value of 1 here would mean
"Check every time", which might be what you want.

Other values which can be discerned in Seamonkey seem to be 2 meaning
"never" and 0 meaning "once per session". AFAICT and YMMV.

Ah, that's it (-I think)! I've always used "once per session" in IE and
never had trouble, so I'll try that.

Alternatively, you can install Pederick's web developer, and use it to
disable the cache while you are doing web development.

I have it (-and, btw, believe it's one of the best pieces of software ever
made,) but would prefer the configuration approach instead.

As always, thanks for the very helpful and significant reply.

 

[Neredbojias]

To further the education of mankind, Michael Winter

To further the education of mankind, Michael Winter

That statement isn't meant to be as absolute as it appears, above.

[snip]

Whenever I change/update a page on my site and then open it with FF,
I always seem to get the old version. None of my pages have any
explicitly-stated caching directives, meta or otherwise.
[snip]

Any thoughts?

Not particularly, but I've never had that problem, and it's difficult to
diagnose remotely. So, we'll start with the obvious (I'll apologise now
for asking anything too obvious), and go from there.

What doesn't get updated? Document content? The style sheet?

Have you checked your server logs to determine if a request was sent?
What about the response headers to ensure that validators (both ETag and
Last-Modified) have changed from their previous values after the update?

Well, I must admit that I hadn't done any of that, but it will be the next
step if the "about:config" setting doesn't work. Actually, I'm not all
that familiar with even _how_ to check such headers, but <sigh> I s'pose
I'll have to learn one of these days. It was the content, btw: the content
(ie: page itself) wasn't replaced with the newer version. I do expect that
the browser_cache...."once per session" setting will work, though.

Mucho thanks for the information and assistance.

 

[frederick]

To further the education of mankind, "frederick"


Yuk! I wanted something where I really didn't have to think...

Heh!

I feel sure that I've seen at least one extension around that provides
a GUI interface for it all.

Oh, okay <grump,grumble,whine />. I guess I'll hafta go and do it.

(Seriously, thanks, and see my reply to Alan.)

Graag gedaan!

 

[Michael Winter]

To further the education of mankind, Michael Winter
<[email protected]> vouchsafed:
[snip]

Have you checked your server logs to determine if a request was
sent? What about the response headers to ensure that validators
(both ETag and Last-Modified) have changed from their previous
values after the update?

Well, I must admit that I hadn't done any of that [...]. Actually,
I'm not all that familiar with even _how_ to check such headers, but
<sigh> I s'pose I'll have to learn one of these days.

The Web Developer extension for Firefox will present the response
headers for whatever resource is in the active tab. The option, 'View
Response Headers', can be found at the end of the Information menu.

I should probably note that the header output will not necessarily be
accurate, or a literal representation, at least when it comes to
multiple instances of a header. The most common difference will be that
the values will be combined into a comma-separated list. However, it may
also drop values in at least one rare case.

If you really want to know exactly what's being sent back, there's no
substitute, in my opinion, for telnet.

[snip]

Mike

 

[Neredbojias]

To further the education of mankind, "frederick"

Graag gedaan!

Gadzundheit.

 

[Neredbojias]

To further the education of mankind, Michael Winter

The Web Developer extension for Firefox will present the response
headers for whatever resource is in the active tab. The option, 'View
Response Headers', can be found at the end of the Information menu.

I'll have to try that - if for no other reason than to become acquainted
with same.

If you really want to know exactly what's being sent back, there's no
substitute, in my opinion, for telnet.

Ah, Telnet! I used that like 2 decades ago, and it worked good! Figured
the fade-out was due to the up-and-coming "graphical interfaces" which are
still, er, up-and-coming...