30663 - reload button should defeat Cache-Control max-age

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Core :: Networking: Cache, defect, P3)

Description

[David A. Madore]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; N; Linux 2.2.13-lazuli i686; en-US; m14)
BuildID:    2000030312

If the server sends a Cache-Control: max-age= header, the document will be
cached for this duration and not checked against the network even if the reload
button is pressed.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Load a document on a site that will send an HTTP/1.1 Cache-Control: max-age=
header.
2. Click on reload before the max-age is expired.
3. No network connection is made.


Actual Results:  Document is not reloaded.  If it has been modified on the
server, the old version is still seen.  This has been experimentally verified
against an Apache/1.3.9 server with a "Header set Cache-Control max-age=86400"
directive.

Expected Results:  Mozilla should send an HTTP GET request with an
If-Modified-Since header (as well as If-None-Match if possible).

All this discussion is in the absence of proxies: only the server and the client
are involved.  The way I see it, the max-age value should only be used when
following links and such; it should not override the effect of the reload button.

Bugs 14772 discusses the HTTP caching mechanism further (but it is not identical
to this one: it complains about Mozilla not caching enough whereas I complain
about Mozilla caching too much).  But 26638 is also related to this one (but it
is also about Mozilla not caching enough).

Comment 1

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

[e-mail] - is this still the cache behaviour on a recent build?

Gerv

Comment 2

[davidm]

I build from thursday on would be best since I modified a bunch of reload 
properties for back,forward, and reload. Thanks.

Comment 3

[David A. Madore]

It is fixed on build 2000051210.  Great!

Comment 4

[Tom Everingham]

verified by reporter