Internet Explorer.
These two words can send a Halloween-worthy chill down the spine of any web developer. A colleague recently joked that it was like Freddie Krueger jumping out at you from around a corner- I quipped that I’d take Freddie Krueger any day. Obviously recent versions of IE have been more up to snuff, but…users. Users are not…and users are the ones I make these websites for. So what they worry about needs to be on the list of things I worry about. Up to a certain point, anyway. I don’t support IE 8 and under. Users get a “browse happy” message, and I feel that’s fair. They shouldn’t be on old versions of IE anyway, for security reasons; but I try to support the 2-3 most recent versions of a browser, as a general rule.
I had an email from a user who pointed out that a newly-created had some issues – and sure enough, when I asked them what browser/device, it was IE on a desktop. Despite planning for the unplanned, IE 9 was causing some issues.
The super fun part – and the point of this post – is that if a site is bookmarked/favorited, using internet settings to clear the cache isn’t enough. There’s an extra box to tick (or un-tick, as the case may be) to NOT preserve the cache for sites you have bookmarked. Granted, it’s the top option in the list, but a new option nonetheless, and one that is easily overlooked (by users who are used to the clear cache > close browser > reopen browser > reload website routine.
So check the IE options, because they’ve changed. One more tidbit to randomly know.
Here’s a screenshot: