@fergald FYI comments welcome!

Preview URLs (2 pages)

• /en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Guides/Caching
• /en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Reference/Headers/Cache-Control

(comment last updated: 2026-07-02 23:58:01)

Thanks @tunetheweb - very useful. I've subedited a little to my taste - mostly because I wanted to be even more direct about the unexpected case being the history navigations. I also duplicated the note in Cache-Control, because I think people might also search there.

1. Are you happy with those changes
2. Is there anywhere else we should highlight this? I was wondering if maybe also in https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/History_API ?

I could be wrong but I thought this also impacted max-age. Someone said we behave like force-cache here

Thanks @hamishwillee . I wasn't loving your last sentence (it seems to imply using back DOES use the HTTP cache outside of bfcache), so tweaks that a little further.

I don't think this needs to be on the History API page. It doesn't discuss other caching directives. So think these two pages are sufficient.

PTAL and merge if good!

@fergald I added a similar comment to max-age and must-revalidate sections. It's a little repetitive but think that's the best way.

Thanks @hamishwillee . I wasn't loving your last sentence (it seems to imply using back DOES use the HTTP cache outside of bfcache), so tweaks that a little further.

@tunetheweb I wasn't loving your last sentence either - very hard to parse. However I've restructured this and I am pretty sure we'll both be happy.