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In my IIS7.5 on my Windows 2008R2 server, I have a url rewrite. The rewrite seems to work in Internet Explorer, but Firefox and Chrome still give me a 404. Firefox even skips the redirect if refresh without using the contents stored in the cache.

Any clue how to make this right?

            <rule name="Redirect site" patternSyntax="Wildcard" stopProcessing="true">
                <match url="{HTTP_HOST}/site*" />
                <action type="Redirect" url="http://site.domain.org"  redirectType="Permanent"/>
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URL rewriting does not depend on the browser, Firefox likely has cached an old resposne. Have you tried restarting firefox? –  Sammitch Jan 12 '13 at 0:03
I know it doesn't depend on the browser, but it is, in fact, the browser which seems to have an issue. I restarted firefox but the problem remains. IE picks up the redirect immediately. I also don't see any addons in the list that would prevent a redirect. I have three different profiles, all have the same issue. Chrome doesn't navigate either. Only IE respects the IIS setttings I have given above. –  BGM Jan 12 '13 at 3:55

1 Answer 1

I can't talk about Chrome but Firefox has, and has had for quite some time, a bug where it fails to recognise new content on some pages and uses it's cache instead. Just restarting the browser achieves nothing. You have to clear the browser cache completely. In some web apps I have to append a random or timestamped string to the URL in order to get FF to always reload some pages. The relevant meta tags in the header are very often also ignored by FF.

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+1 Very true... very annoying, but not a bug. Firefox correctly takes a 301 to mean a permanent redirect. According to RFC if that URL is entered subsequently then it should only use the previously cached result. –  Chris S Jan 13 '13 at 4:17
@Chris, the bug I'm referring to has nothing to do with redirects. It's simply that FF at times uses it's cached copy even if the page has changed, regardless of what refresh or expired directives are sent. Not a big problem for most web sites but really troublesome for web apps where pages must be reloaded every time. –  John Gardeniers Jan 13 '13 at 5:16

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