Re: Link + Anchor in I.E

At 03:23 PM 8/1/00 -0700, you wrote (and I edited):

>Does somebody know how to force the browser
>to reload the document before going to the anchor ?
>Thanks,
>Adrien
>*********************************

Adrien,
I apologise for my earlier answer being somewhat uninformed. I have been
researching your interesting question about forcing the browser to reload a
page from a server, rather than accessing its own cached copy. Wow, what a
can of worms you've opened!!

It seems it's not so easy, and there may be no way to guarantee a page
reload for all browsers, unless you can control the server on which your
page is hosted. A server can write "true HTTP headers" (not the same as the
html head area) and can control caching in that way. See this great webFAQ
on browsers and caching control, and what does and doesn't work, clearly
explained:
http://www.mnot.net/cache_docs/

There's also the typically opaque W3C HTTP1.1 Protocol, (which most browsers
do not yet implement) which has commands like max-age and no-store, here:
http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.9

In addition, there are many views on the "morality" of forcing a browser to
reload. For example, some people feel "It's my browser and I'll cache if I
want to! cache if I want to! cache if I want to!" :) See this great post:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-talk/2000MarApr/0029.html

Internet Explorer caters to the view that aggressive caching is a positive
trait, and it is difficult to defeat it.

NONE of these are guaranteed to work everywhere (although you should try
them for your case):
<META Http-Equiv="Pragma" Content="no-cache">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Expires" CONTENT="Mon, 06 Jan 1990 00:00:01 GMT">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="0.1;URL=your_url_here.html">

Not sure this is any help, but it might be informative,
Jim Allen

HTML: hwg-basics mailing list archives, maintained by Webmasters @ IWA