617704 - can't force refresh of download file; always uses cache

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 55307

(Firefox :: File Handling, defect)

Description

[wskeith78]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.12) Gecko/20101026 Firefox/3.6.12
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.12) Gecko/20101026 Firefox/3.6.12

If I download a file (pdf in this case) then change the file on the server and try to download it again, firefox will still "download" the cached version, failing to see that it is out of date.  The only way around it as far as I can tell is to explicitly clear the cache.  It seems that there ought to be another option for users.  I checked the file on the server, and the timestamps are correctly updated, so I'm not sure why firefox fails to detect that the cache is out of date.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Place a pdf file in a web root somewhere.
2. Download the pdf file by typing the url in the address bar.
3. Change the pdf file on the server.
4. Download it again by typing the url into the address bar.
Actual Results:  
You then note you have downloaded the old version again, rather than the new one.

Expected Results:  
The new version would have been detected and downloaded, or at a minimum, the user would have some way of instructing firefox to do a more careful check: at the moment, it seems that the only option is to clear the ENTIRE cache.

I don't use any pdf reader plug-ins, so the "refresh" button is always disabled since I'm just typing into the address bar.

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

>I checked the file on the server, and the timestamps are
>correctly updated, so I'm not sure why firefox fails to detect that the cache
>is out of date.

That depends on the http headers that the server sends for this URL.

Comment 2

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

This should be fixed in Firefox 4 beta 7 onwards by bug 55307, since downloads are no longer saved into the cache.