Using an .htaccess file to specify that images should be cached is one way to speed up the time it takes for your web pages to appear. Those of us still using older browsers will thank you for using an Expires Header in .htaccess to manage caching.
Yet another good reason to upgrade your browser is to take advantage of newer features. Caching of images and other often-used files can be controlled by your browser.
IE 9 apparently has caching defaulted to ON. Firefox 5 does not.
Here’s how to enable caching in Firefox.
- Type “about:config” in the address bar and hit enter.
- Accept the warning by clicking on the “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button.
- Scroll down to ‘browser.cache.disk.enable’ and double click. You will see the value in the fourth column toggle from false to true, if caching was not enabled already.
- Scroll down to ‘browser.cache.memory.enable’ and double click to enable by setting it to true.
That’s it! The performance of your Firefox browser will speed up, noticeably so. After enabling caching, the time to download pages from a client’s site went from 6-10 seconds to 2-3 seconds!