Force cache to clear???

Shel Kaphan (sjk@amazon.com)
Wed, 13 Dec 1995 17:40:58 -0800

Sandi Newton writes:
> In using Netscape at a public access workstation, I
> need to be able to force the cache to be cleared to
> prevent any "private" information (like a student's
> grade report) from being cached and subsequently
> retrieved by another user at a later time. Does
> anyone have any idea as to how I might accomplish
> this?

I was going to suggest that you use either a CGI script or some other
server-dependent mechanism to attach either "Pragma: no-cache"
or "Expires: <date in the past>" to your document, as both ought to
prevent them from being cached, however neither mechanism prevents
Netscape (at least the version I'm using) from storing the resulting
results in the .netscape-cache directory. This is potentially OK,
depending on what Netscape uses this directory for. If it is only for
display of stuff from the history list, it is fine.

If you are using the Netscape Commerce Server or any other SSL-capable
server, and you use it in the secure mode, then Netscape browsers will not
store the results in the .netscape-cache directory. (If they did,
Netscape would owe me $1000 for pointing it out).

--Shel Kaphan
sjk@amazon.com