meta http-equiv
). The results:Server-generated headers:
Two of the response headers had no effect on the form data:
Expires
and Pragma
. The Cache-Control
header, however, did have the effect being tested for when the value was no-store
. Additionally, IE also shows this effect when the Cache-Control
header has a value of no-cache
, though no effect was seen in Firefox.Browser-simulated headers:
The three
meta http-equiv
tags of interest (expires, pragma no-cache, cache-control no-cache) do not appear to cause the browser to reset a form on returning to a page using the browser history (back/forward). Note: I tried the full complement of options for cache-control with the same result.Further testing would need to be done to see what the effect is on other browsers (Opera and Safari being of most interest).
During testing I also found that the browsers treat a hard reload ([Shift]+Reload) differently. IE will always completely reload a page and it's headers. Firefox, on the other hand, will reload the page but not update the headers until the browser is closed.