Over the last few months there has been discussion here about
Opera going back a page and having to reload some or all of its
contents.
Below I have copied some of the postings. Unfortunately I am noy
able to uderstand or deal with all the technological points which
were raised.
But the bottom line for me is ... can I get Opera to behave as it
used to (before 7.54) where I could go back a page and no Net
traffic of any sort was needed?
Please say "yes"!
That was such a useful feature in Opera.
Jane
================ COPY OF EARLIER POSTINGS ===============
Newsgroups: opera.general
Subject: page refreshes from Opera and/or Google Groups
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 15:51:29 GMT
Jane D wrote:
I recently upgraded to Opera 7.54u1 and recently Google groups
has got a new layout.
I am not sure what has caused it, but if I use Opera to go back
and see the previous page in Google groups then I get that page
downloaded again from the net.
How can I prevent this?
On 13 Jan 2005, Lee Harvey wrote:
You might not be able to with 7.54u1, since according to...
<http://www.opera.com/support/search/supsearch.dml?index=782>
...it includes: "Improved support for the "must-revalidate"
cache directive. "
For some user comments on this, see the "Opera 7.54u1 slower
than 7.54 ?!?" thread dated 12/21:
<URL:
http://groups-
beta.google.com/group/opera.general/browse_thread/t
hread/fa8b9fa24528b6f4/10dec3823798c944?d#10dec3823798c944 >
One thing I can confirm is that the new Google groups redesign
does use the "must-revalidate" cache directive.
Hmmm, that is a step backwards. I really and truly loved Opera's
ability to go back several pages without reloading.
However if I have understood the technical debate in that thread
then Opera will stop refreshing BACK PAGES in the next version. I
hope so!
------
Hmmm, that is a step backwards. I really and truly loved Opera's
ability to go back several pages without reloading.
I agree. One of the main reasons I like Opera (I use version 7.20
build 3144) is that it allows me to quickly browse a particular
technical forum (www.control.com) using my dial-up connection
without having to reload the main page every time I went back from
reading a particular posting. That main page has a lot of
graphics and stuff that must be loaded before I see the good
stuff. It was a pain with Netscape and IE. The designer of that
website probably wanted to flag the main page as "Must Revalidate"
because someone might have added a posting to the list while I was
reading another posting. But the list is moderated and postings
are usually added in a group. If I really wanted to be sure I
wasn't missing anything, I could always hit "Reload". I
appreciate the ability to ignore the "Must Revalidate" flag,
particularly when the website designers make indiscriminant use of
that flag.
-Robert Scott
Ypsilanti, Michigan
====== Also there is this extract:
From: Nisse Engström <PvovotkNOSPAM@xxxxxxxx> Newsgroups:
opera.general Subject: Re: Opera 7.54u1 slower than 7.54 ?!? Date:
Sun, 9 Jan 2005 12:07:16 +0100 Organization: Opera Software Net
News
Steve Pugh<steve@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
A page with the following headers: Cache-Control: max-age:
1209600,must-revalidate Expires: Wed, 05 Jan 2005 09:08:05 GMT
is being reloaded by Opera 7.54u1
But reading the HTTP/1.1 spec
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt I see this: "When the
must-revalidate directive is present in a response received by a
cache, that cache MUST NOT use the entry after it becomes stale
to respond to a subsequent request without first revalidating it
with the origin server. (I.e., the cache MUST do an end-to-end
revalidation every time, if, cased solely on the origin server's
Expires or max-age value, the cached response is stale.)"
From the above max-age and expires values the page can not be
considered stale so there should be no need to revalidate.
I tend to agree. According to my brief tests, 7.54u1 reloads from
the server every time the test-URL is entered. 7.60p4b, p4c and
8.00b1, however, only reload from cache, so presumably this has
been fixed.
--n