I've run into a problem where I add a web app to my iPad home screen (iOS 5.0.1 iPad 2), and when I open it it appears to be caching something behind the scenes, independent of Safari.
I've cleared out everything from Safari that's available in Settings (Clear History and Clear Cookies & Data), and when I navigate to the web app with Safari I see the app in its current state. However if I open the home screen bookmark I get the app in a pre-changed state.
I've seen a lot of information about using a cache.manifest to cache resources for offline use, but I'm not sure if that's relevant to this since I would like the exact opposite: cache nothing.
I've gone to the level of not even testing external resources; if I change some arbitrary test string in the body element of my index.html, the home screen bookmark does not show the updated text.
I think I found a workaround:
The new version of the site only appears when the index.html file changes.
(the first file to be loaded)
If you leave the index.html and only change some js in other files then the site doesn't load the new version.