Re: page reloads

Jon Knight writes:
 > On Wed, 31 May 1995, Kee Hinckley wrote:
 > > >Just have the CGI script that processes the FORM return the required
 > > >document?
 > > 
 > > I believe the point was that this doesn't necessarily force a reload.
 > 
 > Erm, it should do.  Proxy caches shouldn't be caching any returns from 
 > CGI scripts as these are likely to be dynamic documents (ie they can 
 > change between invocations).  If the CGI script is called and then 
 > returns some arbitrary HTML document, that document is the one that the 
 > browser should display.
 > 

How can proxy caches they tell the difference between a return from a
CGI script and another document?  Some returns from CGI scripts might
well be static documents, for which caching would be appropriate.  
"Dynamic" documents that should not be cached should be set to expire
immediately.  Unfortunately, as discussed elsewhere, current browsers 
do not all handle expires gracefully, so this whole area is currently
in a bit of a mess.

--Shel

Received on Wednesday, 31 May 1995 13:31:19 UTC