Is it possible to have Firefox and IE use the same cache?

[GreatBarracuda]

I was thinking about it as I tried to go over a website which wasn't working properly with FF. So I used IE and it worked fine. Of course, IE downloads all the images and everything else from the website again for its own cache.

Is it possible to have ONE shared cache for IE and FF so that all the data is downloaded once you visit a website in EITHER browser. This would be useful with media-heavy websites and for people with a slow connection.

Maybe, it's already implemented somewhere. I have no idea. What are your thoughts?

 

[Zero Plasma]

Mabye you can set FF's cache to store in IE's location?
Find where IE stores it, then.

Specify where to store the cache in FireFox

To specify in which folder the cache is stored, add the following code to your user.js file:

// Path to Cache folder:
user_pref("browser.cache.disk.parent_directory","C:\\Path To Cache");

Remember to use two backslashes for the path separators if you're using Windows, e.g. C:\\Path\\Path To Cache instead of C:\Path\Path To Cache.

Edit: Heres what the user.js file is.

user.js

This is the main preferences file for Firefox and is located in you profile folder. The file does not exist by default, so you need to create it before you can start adding your preferences.

Windows users: If you know how to create a file, just skip this section. Before you can create the file, you must make sure that you can see the file type extensions in Windows. Start Explorer (just click on the My Computer icon on your desktop) and select Tools > Folder Options.... Click the View tab and uncheck the Hide extensions for known file types option. Now, go to your profile folder and select File > New > Text Document. The default name New Text Document.txt should be displayed. Change the name to user.js (click Yes on the file type warning that appears).

Linux users: I assume that you know how to create a file if you're running Linux. Just create user.js in your profile folder.

It's also possible to edit the preferences normally stored in user.js by entering about:config in the address bar and press Enter. You will see a list of all available preferences in Firefox (many of them are derived from Mozilla and are not used but not yet removed). Double-click on a preference to change its value. The changes you make here will be immediately stored in prefs.js, which is a file automatically generated by Firefox.

Tell me if it works.

 

[Zero Plasma]

bump for edit

 

[Alex]

bump lets see if this works... depending on what they cache and how they read the cached info it could work!

 

[cKGunslinger]

I seriously doubt it works. I'm pretty sure IE and FF use entirely different structure and files for its cache. One of the things I miss about IE (about the only thing) is that I could watch a Flash or QT file embedded in a web page, then navigate to the cache to find the actual file and save it locally. (you have to manually find it, search does not work on the IE cache, even though the file will have the appropriate extention (*.swf or *.mov).) FF doesn't seem to have this 'feature.'

 

[GreatBarracuda]

Originally posted by: cKGunslinger
I seriously doubt it works. I'm pretty sure IE and FF use entirely different structure and files for its cache. One of the things I miss about IE (about the only thing) is that I could watch a Flash or QT file embedded in a web page, then navigate to the cache to find the actual file and save it locally. (you have to manually find it, search does not work on the IE cache, even though the file will have the appropriate extention (*.swf or *.mov).) FF doesn't seem to have this 'feature.'

Hmmm...then how does FF store media files?

 

[kamper]

I just looked in my firefox cache directory and all the filenames are randomly generated, which I don't believe IE does. However, it does appear that there is one cached item per file (one image or one html page...) so there's at least hope. Don't know if it's the magic from kde or openbsd but konqueror detected all the file types nicely (gives me nice icon previews of the images and html).

Even if they're not compatible, I bet it wouldn't be that hard to build support into firefox for reading IE's cache. Maybe you could even do it as an extension? I doubt you'd have much luck the other way around