I have found one other post here referring to this issue, but no solution was provided for SWFObject. I have found that when IE6 and IE7 have the 'Check for newer versions of stored pages' option set to 'automatically', the browser will cache the SWF file even if the html is not cached due to cache control methods such as header or meta tags. I am looking for a way to disable or prevent the browser from caching the actual SWF file using SWFObject, or of forcing a variable to be passed into the flash on a page refresh so that the occurrence can be detected.
What is happening is the browser is loading the SWF from cache--complete with all variables as they were on last use. This causes a reload via F5 or shift+F5 to skip a SWF's first time loading code. While this behavior is handy in some instances, it is not desired for my current project. As of now, I do not see any way of detecting this occurrence from within flash. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. The problem does not occur in FF or Opera.
If you want to force IE to load a new swf each time the page loads, you can tack on a unique id onto the swf. This has been discussed many times on various posts.
something like the below will ensure you always load the swf fresh and not from cache.
var so = new SWFObject('some.swf?rid=' + new Date().getTime(), 'someid', '300', '250', '8', '#ffffff');
You can use the same technique if you are loading xml from a server etc into flash. PUt a unique id on the end of the server call to ensure you are always getting fresh data from the call.