Hi Joe,

Let's say that I am building a simple brochure with few HTML pages.
Once in a month I will need to add/delete few things to some of those 
HTML pages -- in this case I expect that MS-IE will load the new 
versions of those HTML pages, in other words I expect that MS-IE will 
revalidate its cache each time the user accesses those HTML pages and 
will always present the last version to users.

Later, I will add some CSS rules and maybe even some JavaScript/DHTML 
scripts and I will hyperlink them to those HTML pages. Again, once in a 
month I will need to change one of those files -- in this case I expect 
that MS-IE will revalidate its cache and will always give the last 
version of styling/behavior to users.

The same works with _hyperlinked_ XML and XSLT files -- in all those 
cases MS-IE sends a GET request with "if-modified-since" header, the 
server replies 200 (and document content) or with 304 (not modified -- 
use your cached version!).

While loading files through the _XMLHTTPRequest_ object, MS-IE no longer 
revalidates its cache. Once the file is loaded, it enters the cache and 
no more requests are send to the server, never! MS-IE expects that files 
loaded through the _XMLHTTPRequest_ will never change! In this case, if 
users want to get the last versions of files, they will have to manually 
empty their browser cache. Why?

Adrian.


Joe Fawcett wrote:
> "Adrian Herscu" <bmf1972@a...> wrote in message 
> news:e2rC2kvfFHA.3936@T......
> 
>>Hi Neil,
>>
>>Although I never used PHP, by looking at your snippet I recognize that this 
>>solution is not different from the previous -- both circumvent the caching 
>>mechanisms between the server and its clients :-(
>>
>>This solution is worse than the previous one since it requires the 
>>installation of some server-side software (the PHP script requires a special 
>>scripting engine).
>>
>>But I guess that I will have to live with this:
>>"The Mozilla XMLHttpRequest does not cache at all - you have to handle that. 
>>The IE implementation caches by default unless told not to by the server or 
>>when a request header is sent that involves caching (like If-Modified-Since)"
>>...until somebody at Microsoft will dare to fix this bug (in Mozilla it is 
>>already fixed).
>>
>>Thanks for your time,
>>Adrian.
>>
>>
> 
> In my opinion that's not a bug. IE is following normal http protocols. Mozilla 
> gives you no choice whereas many people have requested that XSLT files are 
> cached where possible.
>