I’ve just done some updates to my Flash site (http://www.theadigroup.com) and come across an interesting and v. annoying problem!
In the update, there’s a part of it that loads a separate Flash movie on top of part of the existing site. When you click on a button for another section of the site, it unloads the movie.
However, I found that when I made the updates, it all worked apart from it wouldn’t unload the movie when I clicked for another section.
So I went into the Tools menu on IE6 and deleted Temporary Internet Files. Then it worked.
Basically, this problem is only an issue for users who have been to the site before. The browser doen’t seem to pick up that the site has been updated and uses the page already in it’s cache memory (I think!). I notice it does it with this message board and I have to refresh it to get a different screen to yesterday’s.
Is there a way to make the browser check that the site has not been updated since the last visit? Should it do it automatically and are my browser settings all funny? Or can I add some HTML or Java into the page to make it check for updates?
I would like to know how to do this too. The only effective method I know how to do is for the viewer to clear their browser cache. Considering most people don’t think of this, it doesn’t help anything.
So yeah, I am with you, I would like to know how to do this.
Under the Temporary Internet Files section click on Settings.
Change the Check for newer versions of stored pages to what you want eg. “Every visit to the page”.
That’s for IE6.
You can press CTRL+F5 to force the same thing however this won’t work if your ISP has some sort of web cache running. My ISP claims the latest file is downloaded when you press CTRL+F5 but that’s not the case.
You can also use META tags, to force the browser not to cache the page and load it again from fresh - although again, with some web caches this doesn’t work.