Coping with Internet Explorer

 

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer gives web developers many headaches due to all kinds of little oddities in its behavior. One those oddities is when Internet Explorer decides that it needs to keep copies of web pages to display to the user instead of getting them from the application you are using.

This is all good and dandy when you are viewing a web page that does not change often, like cnn.com for example. But when you are editing a timesheet and making changes you do not want to see the old timesheet because Internet Explorer decided to be “helpful”. You would want to view the changes immediately as you make them.

In this scenario we have couple of options. The best option is not use Internet Explorer at all and instead use one of the modern alternatives, such as Google Chrome (can be downloaded here) or Firefox (can be downloaded here).

If for some reason you are unable to use a modern browser and need to use Internet Explorer then you will need to tell Internet Explorer to always give you the latest version of the website you are viewing and not its own saved copy.

To do this, you need to go to the Tools menu. Find the “Internet Options” option, typically the last item under the Tools Menu.

Once the Internet Options dialog is open look for Browsing History which is available on the General tab in IE8.

Click the Settings button to open up another dialog. Under the heading Temporary Internet Files choose the option for: “Every time I visit the webpage”.

Click OK on the dialog windows, close your Internet Explorer and restart it and you should start seeing better results.

The following screen shot shows the settings windows in IE 8. If you are using an older version of Internet Explorer then you will need to upgrade or download one of the other browsers mentioned above.

 

After you do the steps above and restart Internet Explorer there is one more step to do once you actually go back and login into SpokeWare. When editing a Timesheet (any Timesheet) for the first time after making those changes you will need to click the Ctrl and F5 keys together to force Internet Explorer to refresh its stored copies of the webpages.