IE6 is Crap By Design

I give up. I have had it. Internet Explorer 6 absolutely sucks.

Since I first started toying with JavaScript and using .innerHTML to dynamically add, change, or remove images on a web page in response to a user's actions or at page load (e.g. search icons tagged at the end of scientific references to coordinate user click-to-check existence of DOI, Handle, or PDF via Rod Page's JSON reference parsing web service at bioGUID.info), I have struggled with the way this version of the browser refuses to cache images.

If multiple, identical images are inserted via .innerHTML, IE6 makes a call to the server for every single copy of the image. Earlier and later versions of IE do not have this problem; these versions happily use the cache as it's meant to be used and do not call the server for yet another copy of an identical image. I tried everything I can think of from preloading the image(s), using the DOM (i.e. .appendChild()), server-side tricks, etc. but nothing works. Page loads are slow for these users and the appended images via .innerHTML may or may not appear, especially if there are a lot of successive .innerHTML calls. Missing images may or may not appear with a page refresh and images that were once present may suddenly disappear with a successive page refresh. Because AJAX is becoming more and more popular & as a consequence, there are more instances of .innerHTML = "<img src="..."> in loops, don't these people think something is not right with their browser? I doubt it. Instead, I suspect they instead think something is wrong with the web page and likely won't revisit.

Here's some example code that causes the problem for an IE6 user:

...
for (i=0;i<foo;i++) {
bar.innerHTML = "<img src="...">;
}
...

Web server log lines like the following (abridged to protect the visitor to The Nearctic Spider Database) fill 10-20% of these daily files:

GET /bioGUID/magnifier.png - 80 - HTTP/1.1 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+6.0;...etc...)

GET /bioGUID/magnifier.png - 80 - HTTP/1.1 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+6.0;...etc...)

GET /bioGUID/magnifier.png - 80 - HTTP/1.1 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+6.0;...etc...)

GET /bioGUID/magnifier.png - 80 - HTTP/1.1 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+6.0;...etc...)

GET /bioGUID/magnifier.png - 80 - HTTP/1.1 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+6.0;...etc...)

GET /bioGUID/magnifier.png - 80 - HTTP/1.1 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+6.0;...etc...)

GET /bioGUID/magnifier.png - 80 - HTTP/1.1 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+6.0;...etc...)

So, I wonder how much bandwidth on the Internet superhighway is consumed by this terrible design flaw? Microsoft is aware of the issue, but weakly tried to convince us that this behaviour is "by design" as can be read in their Knowledge Base Article Q319546. Give me a break. The solution in that article is pathetic and doesn't work.

Depending on what you do in your JavaScript, you can either force an HTTP status code of 200 OK (i.e. image is re-downloaded, thus consuming unnecessary bandwidth) or an HTTP status code of 304 Not Modified ("you already got it dummy, I'm not sending it again" - but still some bandwidth). Though I haven't yet investigated before/after in my web logs, others have reported that the following code at the start of some JavaScript will force a 304:

try {
document.execCommand("BackgroundImageCache", false, true);
} catch(err) {}

I'm not convinced that this will work.

After pulling my hair out for 2+ years trying to come up with a work-around, I have concluded that the only way this problem can be prevented is if the user adjusts how their own cache works. If you are an IE6 user, see the note by Ivan Kurmanov on how to do this - incidentally, Ivan's server-side tricks also don't work). In a nutshell, if you use IE6, DO NOT choose "Every visit to the page" option in your browser's cache settings. Unfortunately, there is no way for a developer to detect a user's cache settings. Like pre-IE6 and post-IE6 users, people with IE6 whose cache is set to check for newer content "Automatically", "Never" or "Every time you start Internet Explorer" also do not have this problem.

Developers (like Mishoo) have suggested that this "by design" flaw is a means for Microsoft to artificially inflate its popularity in web server log analyses. But, I doubt analysis software confuses multiple downloads from the same IP address with browser popularity. So how can this possibly be by design if there is no way for a developer to circumvent it? Who knows.

The only real solution I have been able to dream up, though I haven't implemented it, is to perform a JavaScript browser version check. If people choose to use IE6 and don't upgrade to IE7 then they won't get the added goodies. I certainly don't want to degrade their anticipated experience, but I also have to think about cutting back on pushing useless bandwidth, which is not free. If you insist on using IE, please upgrade to IE7. This version of the browser was released a year ago. Better yet, make the switch to FireFox.