Clever Geek Handbook

HTTP caching, browser weirdness, and everything else!

Yesterday I tried to get serious about properly caching some PHP pages (think "Articles with comments"). Big failure.

Long story short: I set the ETag header, set Last-Modified, and check the server side of every article browser request with them to see if I can post 304 back.

The problem is simple: the browser (tested with FF 3 so far), after 1 or 2 reloads, suddendly stops checking the page freshness and uses its cached copy.

For what I understood using ETag and Last-Modified, the browser MUST check with the server on every request (otherwise, why bother using ETag at all?).

I've also tried playing with Cache-Control or Expires ... nothing. One way or another, the browser stops checking or doesn't send back the ETag ...

I'm really upset ... did anyone accidentally figure this out?

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2 answers


You must always set Expires if you want to re-check your browser.

Firefox3 does check based on the "Expires" header. If it is missing, firefox3 will compose the expiration date.



Link, Difference between firefox and ie cacheing

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You can check the current FF cache entries at

about:cache


This will show you the FF expiration dates stored in each cache entry.

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