Applet loading

[Elizabeth Luckose]

Hi
How the applets are loaded ?
After loading an applet, suppose I close the browser and again open the browser? Did the applet get loaded again?Or the browser caches the applet when it is loaded for the first time and use this cached applet for next loading?
If it is again loaded without any caching, can I make the caching possible and get the applet loaded in less time ?If it is possible can I make this happen for a long time?
I am using servlets . Is there anyother way for doing this caching with the help of servlets.
My aim is to reduce the load time for applets
Please help..it is very urgent
THANKS
ELIZABETH

[Tim Holloway]

Caching is completely the responsibility of the client - the server cannot force a client to cache if it doesn't want to - though a properly working client should honor server requests NOT to cache. The actual "stickiness" of an object in cache is usually controllable by the user, but the details are browser-specific.
You don't want an applet to be cached until a certain date - they're just too likely to have bug-fixes applied before then. The ideal method would be for the server to present a timestamp and the client to only pull a copy if its timestamp is out-of-date or the object isn't in cache, but I don't think there's an http protocol for that. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that there were some improvements in caching added to HTTP 1.1, so I'd check the standard at http://www.w3.org and see what it says.