firefox F5 does partial refresh.

Question

I have a listbox and a html <map> element on my page. The list box has 50 state names of USA. and the <map> is a html <map> with 50 <area> elemnts over an image. I have a functionality on my page. When you select a state from list box, the appropriate <area> element is highlighted using some jquery and javascript.

My problem is, when i click on the map and hit F5, the map is refreshed, but not the list box. But when I do Ctrl+F5, everything is refreshed.

I'm not able to figure out why this partial refresh is happening on F5.

I observe this only in firefox(I have latest version). But not in IE or safari.

Answer 1

That is defined behavior. F5 will reload the page including cached content; CTRL+F5 will force all content to refresh, including cached content.

EDIT

This page might help you out some more: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/385367/what-requests-do-browsers-f5-and-ctrl-f5-refreshes-generate