I have an HTML document with an associated appcache manifest. But now I want to get rid of offline application caching for a while.
If I remove mention of the manifest from the <html> tag, browsers that already have a cached version will continue to use that cached version.
If I update the appcache manifest, well, whatever, there is still an appcache.
What is the most sensible way to go about removing offline application caching? I suppose that I could just change the manifest to have no entries other than:
NETWORK:
*
Then it won't actually cache anything.
But surely there must be a way to get rid of the appcache and the manifest file altogether, no?
You simply need to remove the appcache manifest from your server. If the browser can't access the manifest file, it will stop caching your app and remove all cached data.
Some useful information from two sites:
If the manifest file itself can't be retrieved, the cache will ignored and all cached data associated with it will be disregarded.
http://appcache.offline.technology/
Application caches can also become obsolete. If the manifest is removed from the server, the browser removes all application caches that use that manifest, then sends an "obsoleted" event to the application cache object. Then the application cache's status is set to OBSOLETE.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Offline_resources_in_Firefox