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Dr. Website® Archives 2002

October 03, 2002
    Question:
    Dear Dr. Website: I've run into a problem several times, and am not sure if a meta tag will help.

    On occasion, if a client views a page after I've updated information, the updated information is not always visible to them. In the past, I've advised them to hit the refresh button on their browser for the latest page to load.

    That seems to alleviate their initial concern, but I'm unsure how I'll answer them when they ask, "do my customers need to refresh their browser too?".

    <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office">

    /I've done some reading about meta tags, and feel that's the way I should be headed; although I can't seem to locate the correct tag to use. I think I would want the browser to look for a newer version of the page before it loads what it has in it's cache, right??? I feel that "refresh" and "reload" tags don't do quite what I'm after.

    What would you suggest?
    Thank You

    Answer:
    You're headed in the right direction. The meta tags you're looking for are:

    <META http-equiv="Expires" content="Tue, 01 Jun 1999 19:58:02 GMT">

    or simply:

    <meta http-equiv="Expires" content="0">

    as well as:

    <META HTTP-EQUIV="pragma" CONTENT="no-cache">

    which tells the browser not to cache the page at all.
    Thanks

    --Dr.Website

    Question:
    Dear Dr. Website:
    I would like to add a re-direct to one of our web pages, and have successfully done so, but when the user clicks on the back button....the page only reloads as the redirect continually directs them to that page.

    How can I get the users to the page they came from?

    Answer:
    One way to avoid the problem you're encountering is to use a link which takes the user back to the original page. You can use a hard coded link to the specific page, or use the history() function to do it. To use the history() function, you'd do something like this:

    <A HREF="javascript:history.go(-1)">move back</A>

    You could also redirect the page from the server level (you or your host should be able to enable redirects for specific pages). Then it would act like any other direct link, and visitors would be able to just use their back button.
    Thanks

    --Dr.Website ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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