Browser Caching and You - A Love Story

Over time, Web developers have feared, hated and loved Web caching, at times trying to kill it, at others professing undying love. Mark Nottingham (chair of the IETF HTTPbis Working Group and author of its revised Web Caching specification) will examine how browsers (mis)-treat your content today, as well as where your relationship with browser caching might go in the future.

Transcript

1. Browser Caching & You
   (a love story)
   Mark Nottingham / mnot.net
   

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2. At First Sight:
   The Honeymoon
   

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3. EMPTY
   FULL
   http://www.yuiblog.com/blog/2007/01/04/performance-research-part-2/
   

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5. Relationship Trouble
   

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6. http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/average-web-page/
   

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7. Mozilla: 50MB
   IE: 10% (max 1G)
   Safari: ??
   Chrome: 8-250M?
   

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8. Mozilla: 100 pages
   

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9. Mozilla: 16384 entries
   89 // Min and max values for the number of records in the DiskCachemap
   90 #define kMinRecordCount 512
   91
   92 #define kSeparateFile 0
   93 // #define must always be <= 65535KB, or overflow. See bug 443067 Comment 8
   94 #define kMaxDataFileSize 5 * 1024 * 1024 // 5 MB (in bytes)
   95 #define kBuckets (1 << 5) // must be a power of 2!
   (~230 pages)
   

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10. Cache-Control: max-age=0,
    no-cache, no-store,
    private, pre-check=0,
    post-check=0
    

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11. “Maybe we should
    start seeing other
    people...”
    

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12. HTML5 AppCache
    

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14. • privacy concerns (“EverCookie”)
    • relationship with HTTP caching is
    poorly de^ined
    • designed for of^line use
    

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15. Getting to know
    each other
    

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17. max-age / expires
    Chrome 6
    IE7
    

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18. max-age / expires
    Safari 5.0.2
    Take-away: Cache timing is OK, but not exact
    

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19. no-cache no-store
    Take-away: no-store is enough
    

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20. Age
    IE8
    

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21. Date
    Safari 5.0.2
    IE (any)
    

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22. pre-check, post-check
    Take-away: max-age=0, pre-check=0, post-check=0
    is a really bad idea.
    IE (most)
    

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23. Where is this thing going?
    (“the talk”)
    

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24. • Fixing Bugs
    • Sizing Caches Appropriately
    • Replacement Algorithms
    

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25. stale-while-revalidate
    cache
    

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26. stale-if-error
    

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27. Cache Invalidation
    

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28. RFC 2616:
    the internets
    Cache
    origin server
    POST/PUT/DELETE/etc.
    Invalidations after Updates or Deletions
    Request-URI
    Content-Location
    Location
    

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29. Problem: Related Responses
    POST /articles/123/new_comment
    /newest_comments
    /articles/123/comments
    /comment_feed
    

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30. Link: rel=invalidated-by
    POST /articles/123/new_comment
    /newest_comments
    /articles/123/comments
    /comment_feed
    Link: ; rel=”invalidate
    Link: ; rel=”invalidated-by”
    Link: ; rel=”invalidated-by”
    

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31. Problem 3: Dynamic Relations
    POST /articles/123/new_comment
    /newest_comments
    /articles/123/comments
    /comment_feed
    Link: ; rel=”invalidate
    Link: ; rel=”invalidated-by”
    Link: ; rel=”invalidated-by”
    /bob/comments
    /cat/vuvuzela
    

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32. Link: rel=invalidates
    POST /articles/123/new_comment
    /newest_comments
    /articles/123/comments
    /comment_feed
    Link: ; rel=”invalidate
    Link: ; rel=”invalidated-by”
    Link: ; rel=”invalidated-by”
    /bob/comments
    /cat/vuvuzela
    Link: ; rel=”invalidates”
    Link: ; rel=”invalidates”
    

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33. Linked
    Cache
    Invalidation
    “side effect” invalidation + link relations =
    

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34. Further Out
    (“there’s still life in this thing”)
    • Cache API for invalidation
    • Revisiting of^line caching
    • Forward Cache Digests
    • Explicit Cache Key
    

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