I learned about browser caching in a rather roundabout way many years back in the WIN 95-98 era, Netscape Navigator, I.E. 4 or 5.RustyTheGeek said:.... The Temporary Internet Cache files on your local hard drive store the image from the first time it loads, then that image file is used repeatedly until it is deleted or it expires from the cache area....
I had built a web page of something or other using some WYSIWYG program, the page included an animated gif.
I copied the page and its files to floppy, took it to a friend's for review/critique/show off/whatever, friend was a NN user.
While viewing the page in NN, I happened to notice the floppy kept getting accessed, didn't do this with I.E..
I somehow reasoned that NN was not caching at all, when the gif called for another frame, NN had to go back to the server (the floppy in this case) and download all over again for each and every repeated display of the gif's frames.
In contrast, I.E. accessed and cached the page in it's entirety, once downloaded, it didn't have to go back to the server again.
It may just be that we owe the bandwidth conserving efficiencies of modern browser caching to the snail pace of ancient dial up downloading.
Upvote
0