We should really be version-ing in the URLs when possible instead of the query
string.  For a good example, see Yahoo's YUI URLs.

The [potentially huge] advantage version-ing the URLs has over the query string
approach is that you can still take advantage of caching both server
and client side to accelerate things (and can set the cache expiration
out to infinity without worries).

src="style.css?20090804" (or whatever in the query string) would force
a fresh stylesheet for people with cached versions. We (I) already do
this on cc.org. fwiw.

On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 10:24 AM, Nathan
Kinkade<issues@creativecommons.org> wrote:
>
> New submission from Nathan Kinkade <nkinkade@creativecommons.org>:
>
> When the updated search.creativecommons.org was launched yesterday there were a
> couple known issues that arose due to clients browsers caching the CSS files.
> This brought up the idea that CC should probably be versioning CSS, and perhaps
> JS, files names so that we can be assured that CSS and JS updates will be
> propagated immediately, thereby avoiding site breakages and weirdness due to old
> CSS combined with new site structure, etc.
>
> We should look into ways to at least semi-automate this process, if possible. It
> also occurs to me that the canonical version of the files should retain
> non-versioned names, and a symlink made with the versioned name.
>
> Comments and discussion welcome ...
>
> ----------
> assignedto: nkinkade
> messages: 1279
> nosy: alex, nathan, nkinkade
> priority: feature
> project: Web Properties
> status: chatting
> title: Implement CSS and JS file name versioning to avoid cache issues
>
> _____________________________________________________
> Creative Commons Tracker <issues@creativecommons.org>
> <http://code.creativecommons.org/issues/issue425>
> _____________________________________________________
>

When the updated search.creativecommons.org was launched yesterday there were a
couple known issues that arose due to clients browsers caching the CSS files. 
This brought up the idea that CC should probably be versioning CSS, and perhaps
JS, files names so that we can be assured that CSS and JS updates will be
propagated immediately, thereby avoiding site breakages and weirdness due to old
CSS combined with new site structure, etc.

We should look into ways to at least semi-automate this process, if possible. It
also occurs to me that the canonical version of the files should retain
non-versioned names, and a symlink made with the versioned name.

Comments and discussion welcome ...