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This has been asked before, but why do some browsers display cached versions of the page. None of the previous articles actually solved this problem. I have noticed it affects Safari on Mac OS X, and Opera on Windows, possibly Mozilla as well. This is getting to be a huge annoyance, for me and my users. Please help. Thanks in advance, Kane Lauck karnac@mac.com

I think most if not all modern browsers cache pages. It's done to save load time on the client's end. Some ISPs also cache webpages and feed those to their customers.

Mozilla is smart enough to know there is a new version, so is IE.

Dirk, maybe we should add a Cache-Control: no-cache header to the headers we already send out. -Vinny

No, not on their own. A person can adjust their browser's settings to not cache pages. If they don't this, both of those browsers will serve old cache pages of a site unless a webmaster tells it to do otherwise. She would not be having this problem if the browsers could figure this out all by themselves.

Paraphrasing from email we sent out a couple of times: "You cache to save load time, but this means you look at the same page over and over again for the same URL. Our sites content _will_ change even though it is the same URL. Some browsers will check to see if the page is different. Please check with your browsers technical supprot to find out how to enable this checking if it exists. You can also disable caching, and in some browsers you can disable them for certian sites. Again check with your browsers techinical support to explore this option. If you have done this and the problem exists, check to see if you are an AOL or MSN ISP customer. If you are you might be experiancing the "server-side cache" Problem. On both these services our users have reported that you can hit refersh a few times and the problem disappears for the rest of the session. If this does not work for you, please contact you ISP's techinical support for resolution. Thank You, Maximus Darja.2y.net " Cleared up our problems in 3 out of 3 cases. One MSN ISP, one AOL ISP, and one die hard poor quality line dial up User. Sent this out after the first 2 cases, the first one for an AOL Customer, the second for an MSN Customer. In the first case, I investigated the browser first, then noticed the refershing behaviour. I could be wrong about the server side cache, but am told it happens. The refreshing several times in a row trips something in the server that says "hey page might be dynamic" This is just our solution. Right after we make sure there is no problem with our GL setup (I make random changes sometimes). --maximus

You are correct about there being server side cache. It speeds up the delivery of pages especially when a bunch of people ask for the same ones. I'm not sure which ISPs do this, but I know AOL is one of them for sure.