]OT] http-authorization:

[Tim]

Benjamin Franz:
>> Frequently the people writing the scripts have no formal training in
>> programming and so have no idea about such basic concepts as caching,
>> ...
>> It is more than that. CGI/other scripts freqently fail to implement the more
>> advanced sections of the HTTP standard that provide guidance on caching such
>> as Cache-Control, Modified, Expires, Vary, ETag or even plain old 'HEAD'. In
>> essence, they *TELL* the browsers to not cache by failing to do so.

Donald Arseneau:
> For a dynamic page, you really do not want the browser caching!

It's not as black and white as that!  Making someone reload a page in
its entirety every time they go past it is not good for you or them.
It's far better to have a sensible caching period, short enough for
sites that's appropriate to, longer for sites that don't change that
much.

It's the height of idiocy to have to keep on reloading some page that
has not changed.  I've come across sites where I've loaded a page,
followed one link, immediately found it not to be what I wanted,
backtracked a page mere seconds later, and had to sit through another
half minute of it reloading.  This sort of stupidity is typical of sites
that think they're newsworthy, with dozens of adverts on the pages,
smatterings of articles on the one page, etc.

-- 
Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.
I read messages from the public lists.