To Google: IE 6 is choking on the no-cache header

[amattie]

I'm not sure if the HTTP headers for the www.google.com/jsapi
application were recently changed, but I'm guessing they were as I'm
not sure what else the problem can be. Basically, I've found that IE 6
will NOT execute certain JavaScript (or perhaps all JavaScript --
haven't tested long enough) when the following conditions are met:

1) The visitor is using IE 6 to visit a page.
2) That page frames another page that requests JavaScript.
3) The JavaScript is served with HTTP headers that specifically
include the "no-cache" command in the "Cache-control" headers; other,
similar headers (such as "private", "no-store", etc) do not have the
same effect.
4) The JavaScript is GZIP'd.

My supporting evidence for this claim can be found on this page:
http://idx.diversesolutions.com/framed.html. The problem is that I am
trying to call the AJAX API's google.load function immediately after I
include the jsapi script file in my document, and IE 6 is complaining
that "google is not defined." When I mess with the www.google.com/jsapi
response in Fiddler and either a) un-GZIP it, or b) remove the no-
cache header, "google", which is supposed to be in the global scope,
is no longer undefined.

I could be completely wrong as I couldn't find _anything_ else out
there to indicate that others have had similar problems, but all of my
testing has lead me to the conclusion that IE will just not execute JS
under those conditions. In the past, I've encountered similar problems
with these exact circumstances and just passed it off as something
that others must have figured out by now.

Perhaps there is another explanation that I am missing that someone
else could help me out with? Otherwise, if I'm right, it's quite
shocking to me that a Google search doesn't come up with any
documentation of this problem.

[jgeerdes [AJAX APIs Guru]]

I was having trouble with IE saying "Google is not defined" for a time
this morning on several of my apps. My research led me to believe
that the jsapi file was not being served to IE because when I tried to
visit it directly via the address bar, I received an HTTP 404 (not
found) error. In FF and Safari, the file was served fine. I dumped
the cache, reloaded the pages several times before suddenly, just as
abruptly as they had gone down, the applications came back on and the
jsapi file was available to IE again. Perhaps this is an ongoing,
intermittent issue on Google's part?

Jeremy R. Geerdes
Effective website design & development
Des Moines, IA

For more information or a project quote:
http://jgeerdes.home.mchsi.com
jgee...@mchsi.com

[Vadim]

Thanks for reporting and identifying the issue. It should now be
fixed, please let us know if that's not the case.

Thanks again,
Vadim

On Nov 9, 5:31 pm, "jgeerdes [AJAX APIs Guru]" <jgeer...@mchsi.com>
wrote:

> jgeer...@mchsi.com