# An easy way to REALLY speed things up? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [May 25, 2002, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-easy-way-to-really-speed-things-up/110828 "2002-05-25T20:20:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![rsa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/839c29/32.png) [@rsa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rsa)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2002, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-easy-way-to-really-speed-things-up/110828/1 "2002-05-25T20:20:57Z")
I’ve been experimenting a bit and am pretty sure I have found something that will speed things up for me and possibly everyone else. This refers specifically to users of Internet Explorer, but may apply to other browsers as well. When the board is slow I often see that the graphics on the SDMB pages (e.g., banner and buttons) add considerably to the load time and server bandwidth. I was thinking there might be an option that was set on the server side that was forcing the gifs to be reloaded each time a page was accessed. Instead I think that there is something we humble dopers could do ourselves. Here is what I found (this is IE 5.5 and may vary for other versions). Under Internet options (aka Internet properties) under the “General” tab there is a “Settings” button for Temporary Internet Files. Here you can specify how often the browser should check for new versions of pages that have been visited before. After playing around, I think it doesn’t work quite like Microsoft implies. I had “Every visit to the page” selected. I’m not sure if this is the default or if I changed it to this at some point in the past. If this is selected it seems that IE checks to see if anything on the page has changed. If not, IE pulls the page from your local cache. But if anything has changed (e.g., a new post to a thread), this option seems to force a reload of everything including the elements which haven’t changed (graphics). If you select “Automatically”, I find that IE works the way I want it to. IE still checks to see if the page has changed, but if it has IE only downloads the elements of the page that have changed. The gif files are NOT downloaded unnecessarily. (Note that the “?” help for this option seems to be incorrect. It says that IE only checks for new page content if you accessed the page from a prior IE session or prior day.) The big question is what is the default setting. If the default is “Automatically”, then I have only found something to help myself. But if the default is “Every visit”, then if all of the IE using dopers change the setting then we should be able to cut down the bandwidth required of the server. ---
**Author:** ![White\_Lightning](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f04885/32.png) [@White\_Lightning](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/White_Lightning)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2002, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-easy-way-to-really-speed-things-up/110828/2 "2002-05-25T21:26:23Z")
Data point: I’m using IE 6.0 and mine was set by default to ‘Automatically.’ ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2002, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-easy-way-to-really-speed-things-up/110828/3 "2002-05-25T23:42:16Z")
Hmm… ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2002, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-easy-way-to-really-speed-things-up/110828/4 "2002-05-25T23:43:19Z")
Well, it did certainly work for me in this small little trial… interesting. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2002, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-easy-way-to-really-speed-things-up/110828/5 "2002-05-25T23:51:03Z")
Wow, it really works great. Now I’m posting to fast! LOL ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2002, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-easy-way-to-really-speed-things-up/110828/6 "2002-05-26T01:45:38Z")
IE 5.5 and my default is “'Automatically”. ---
**Author:** ![Reeder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Reeder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeder)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2002, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-easy-way-to-really-speed-things-up/110828/7 "2002-05-26T04:22:26Z")
I think they just got lucky. ---
**Author:** ![rsa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/839c29/32.png) [@rsa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rsa)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2002, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-easy-way-to-really-speed-things-up/110828/8 "2002-05-26T06:26:15Z")
Drats! It seems like the default is probably “'Automatically”. In which case I can’t get the moniker **hero** in place of **member** as I was hoping. I still would like folks to check their settings. At least it might help a bit for those of us that set “Every visit” believing that with a high speed connection it couldn’t hurt. [sub]Back to the drawing boards.[/sub] ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2002, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-easy-way-to-really-speed-things-up/110828/9 "2002-05-26T07:12:00Z")
Hmm, yes, but it still doesn’t seem to work the way its expected to anyway. Sometimes it refreshes right, sometimes it doesn’t. Fickle, fickle. ---
**Author:** ![rsa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/839c29/32.png) [@rsa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rsa)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2002, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-easy-way-to-really-speed-things-up/110828/10 "2002-05-26T17:27:41Z")
What kind of problem have you been having **erislover**? Everything seems fine for me. What’s not refreshing? ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2002, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-easy-way-to-really-speed-things-up/110828/11 "2002-05-27T15:24:03Z")
rsa - I don’t use IE so I can’t comment if your change makes a difference one way or another.