[WEB4LIB] forcing IE to display page from sever

[Thomas Dowling]

> Please excuse me if this rambles a bit. I'll try to be succinct.
>
> We update the news or a featured program on our home page almost
> daily.  However, IE 5.x (perhaps earlier versions also) insists on
> displaying a page from cache instead of calling the server for a new
page.
> Netscape 4.x displays the new page everytime.
>
> I have tried the following META tags:
>
> <meta HTTP-EQUIV="Expire" CONTENT="now">
> <meta HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma" CONTENT="no-cache">
>


I haven't encountered any case where IE ignored the Pragma: no-cache
header.  HTTP 1.1 has a lot more control over caching behavior, but this
1.0 header should do the job you want it to.  That suggests to me that IE
might be requesting a new copy, but receiving it from some other cache.
Find out for sure if your ISP is sending out your pages through its cache.

'<meta http-equiv...' tags are only observed by caches that actually open
and read the HTML source.  It would be worth the effort to configure your
server to send the actual HTTP headers.  That should communicate what you
want not only to your ISP's outbound cache, but any inbound cache your
users are dealing with.

BTW, the Expires [sic] HTTP header needs a correctly formatted date to
indicate that the corresponding cache entry is stale.


Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu