weird html5 manifest reloading

Question

I'm having a strange problem with the HTML5 manifest file under Chrome 5.0.375.99 but everything seems to be working fine under Safari.

When loading a page for the first time with the manifest file specified for the first time, I can observe using Fiddler that all the files in the manifest being loaded and then halfway through it seems to get the manifest file again. At this point, the error event is triggered and the status of the applicationCache is UNCACHED.

I've tried the following

1. reboot pc
2. restart browser
3. check that the amount of files being cached does not exceed 5mb
4. check that the files in the manifest file is valid by doing a HEAD
5. Tried using a different manifest filename

Answer 1

I've just installed Chrome dev channel and the problem still occurs but now the error logging is better and I get "Application Cache Error event: Manifest changed during update, scheduling retry"

It seems Chrome checks the manifest file if it has changed just before downloading the last entry in the manifest file. The error happens because I used the current timestamp value in the dynamically generated manifest file.

Used timestamp of the time my assembly was built and the problem went away. :)