Using Ctrl+F5 in IE 7 - HttpWatch Blog

Using Ctrl+F5 in IE 7 - HttpWatch Blog

Only the HTML of the page is returned with a 200 OK response; the other items return a 304 Not Modified response. Looking more closely with HttpWatch you can see that If-Modified headers were sent with every request. This is what you would expect from typing F5 or clicking the Refresh button.

It turns out that Ctrl+F5 only works in IE 7 if the keyboard focus is on the web page itself. If you move the focus anywhere else, such as back to the location bar, it ignores the Ctrl key and behaves as if F5 were typed on its own.

So if you really want to do a forced refresh in IE7 make sure you click on the web page or tab first.

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I found this behavior in IE7 & IE8 too. I thought that IE 7/8 have changed “Ctrl + F5″ behaviors. Thanks for pointing out it is due to focus.