Internet Explorer vs. Chrome Cache

Question

Basically, I am trying to make my website more user-friendly by enabling caching. To test my progress, I am using the developer tools in Chrome & IE with the end goal of minimizing the number of calls to the web server. When chrome caches something, the developed tools will give a request response of 200 (cached). On the other hand, IE will always send a small request to the server and get a 304 Response before it reads from its cache.

Which browser is properly following HTTP, and if the answer is Chrome, how can I eliminate the unnecessary 304 calls in IE?

Answer 1

Just to be clear:

• 304 - Server response indicating resource not modified since last request
• 200 - Server response indicating resource returned successfully
• 200(cached) - Psuedo browser response indicating item loaded from local cache

There are also subtle differences depending on how you reload/refresh the page, particularly for IE. (Do you click refresh button, or press Enter on the url bar?) See following:

• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ieinternals/archive/2010/07/08/technical-information-about-conditional-http-requests-and-the-refresh-button.aspx
• What is the difference between HTTP status code 200 (cache) vs status code 304?