iPhone 4 mobile safari cache problems

Hi and thanks in advance for the help.

I am seeing an annoying problem in mobile safari on my iPhone 4. I frequently browse news aggregator sites and tech blogs with links to other webpages and articles on other sites. After clicking through a link and reading an article, I usually use the back button to return to the aggregator website. The problem is that quite often when I hit the back button, I am taken to an old version of the page. For example, the headlines on the news aggregator site will be yesterdays headlines. Or the articles on, say, gizmodo will be articles from yesterday and it appears I'm on the homepage, not further down the article list, but the articles are all old. If I hit refresh in the toolbar, the current page loads again. This happens even when I started on the current, up to date page before clicking a link. I start with today's headlines, click through to an article, hit back, and yesterdays headlines appear.

It seems to be loading some old cached version. Why is it doing this? Anyway to fix it?

iPhone 4, iOS 4

Posted on Jul 9, 2010 11:14 AM

23 replies

Aug 12, 2010 11:08 PM in response to carlosv72

BTW, I'm talking about those tamilwin.com and other sites that were posted earlier.

Aug 22, 2010 12:09 PM in response to biodegraded

I have the same problem while browsing digg.com. It's very annoying to click one link, press back, and have it load the page from 3 days ago. A refresh will bring the page back up to today, but why does it revert back anyway-it already loaded the newest update before I clicked the link!

Aug 25, 2010 12:17 PM in response to biodegraded

I'm an HTML5 developer, and we're experiencing the same problem. Mobile Safari seems to cache AJAX requests regardless of cache headers and of HTTP method (it even caches POST requests). The "solution" on apple's safari iphone docs is to include a timestamp query-string variable. This is not an acceptable solution, since many web sites are not going to go back implement this fix for a misbehaving browser.
The behavior you are seeing on Digg and news aggregator sites makes sense as with full reload you will pull down new content from the server, but any action that triggers an AJAX request will use stale data, particularly when you leave the page and return via the Back button; we have a demo that showcases this behavior here[http://gist.github.com/550032], for any helpful mobile safari techs that may wander by 🙂

Aug 26, 2010 11:14 AM in response to biodegraded

Same issue here. Having to clear the cache is not acceptable. Never had this problem pre-iOS 4.

Aug 30, 2010 8:34 AM in response to biodegraded

Bump.

I have this problem, too, and it's driving me crazy. Having to reload a page when it pulls an older version from the cache - even when there's a newer version that was just loaded - is a giant pain in the ***. Please, Apple, make a fix for this!

cxr341

Level 1

13 points

Oct 13, 2010 12:20 PM in response to biodegraded

Pleeeease, this problem continues to be so annoying. Constantly on sites like CNN.com or Philly.com I read and article, hit back, and some news from days ago is there. I have to scroll up, hit refresh, and then navigate back to where I was. Clearing the cache is simply not useful, as it's just as time-consuming as the issue itself. Is there any update?

poiru

Level 1

0 points

Oct 16, 2010 11:40 AM in response to biodegraded

Please fix. Vey annoying..

Oct 18, 2010 11:08 PM in response to biodegraded

I hope they at least show some support regarding this safari problem. I hope Apple can fix this issue. Or explain why they can't fix it. Come on Apple don't let us down. It's not normal to have to clear your cache or cookies everytime you go and search on the web to enjoy the internet. I just want to press the back button & go back a minute ago. Not a week ago. Thanks. Please keep us posted!

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iPhone 4 mobile safari cache problems