Cache in Netscape and IE

[John Rosenhamer]

I'm not sure when this started to happen, but I became aware of it in late January.

I change our main webpage often to provide up to date information, like when the Library will be closed for Christmas or Spring break, changes in hours for Intercessions, etc. and to announce new services.  Just those things that come up now and then etc., etc., etc.  

Just before Christmas Break we went from Netscape to IE because we had to update and we didn't want the netscape composer, along with all the other baggage Netscape now brings with it.  At that time I also posted the notice that the Library would be closed from Dec. 23 to Jan 2 (I think).  When we came back I removed that notice, edited a few other elements on our Mainframe html.  Around Jan 15th or so my director ask me when I was going to take the notice that the library was closed over Christmas off the page.  I told her I did it.  

Went back to my computer and found that in IE the change was made but in Netscape it was still holding the old notice.  I cleared the cache in Netscape and it picked up the new (now 14 days old) changes.  Then I noticed the IE had not picked up some recent changes.   Fooled around there, cleared the cache, etc. and found in the Internet Options under Tools that there was a button (General Tab, temporary Internet Files) called Settings.  If you pushed the setting you got 4 options under "Check for newer versions of stored page" with automatically as the default.  In the help screen it said in so many words that IE will keep a count of how many times you visit a page and the more often you visit (if the page doesn't change) it will check less and less.  So I changed the choice to "Every visit to the page" and had it changed on all our machines.  Along with this change I had the cache cleared.  

Well that doesn't seem to work.  For our internal users with Netscape, even with clearing cache, history and any thing I can think to change, It doesn't want to go back and get the info from the server.  (Netscape version 4.6)  In fact, just before Spring Break (for us March 13 to 19th) is still on my Netscape page (March 22).  No matter what I do it doesn't want to get the new information.

For IE I had to clear the history and cache, etc. before it came up with the changes.  I made some more changes on the 20th and each time to get IE to accept them I had to clear my own IE's history and cache.  As I said Netscape 4.6 still has not found the changes.

I have gone to the server and read the files there.  The changes are posted.  So I'm stumped.  How do I get these programs to get the new pages when the seem to want to load from cache rather than check the server for changed pages.

Know this is a long and rambling post, but I hope I've stated the case as best I can.  By the way our IE is 5.0.  and I have been using Pro 97 to edit, but just recently instilled Dreamweaver.  The edits after Christmas were made with Pro 97, after Spring Break with Dreamweaver.

John


John H. Rosenhamer
Technical Services Libraian
Oklahoma City Community College
7777 S. May Ave.
Oklahoma City, OK   73159

jrosenhamer at okc.cc.ok.us

(405) 682-1611 Ext. 7229
FAX  (405) 682-7585