How to purge Temporary Internet Files every time that I close the browser?

I've just been looking at the TIF folder, (searching for a lost download), and I was surprised, to put it mildly, at just how much detritus was in there, dating back several years.

Surprised? Why? Well, I have configured MSIE, (via Options ... Advanced), to empty the TIF when the browser is closed. I have, occasionally, also used the Options ... General link to clear all of the old files.

My check revealed that there were around 20,000 files, many of which were actually empty, consuming, in all, around 50 Mb. I appreciate that a lot of the junk was probably left over when, as does happen(!), the browser has crashed. I have manually deleted the old stuff to satisfy my need for tidiness, apart from the index.dat file, at around 9 Mb.

I understand that this is an area which is not available to other programs, but I suspect that having a 'tidy' file does, or should, make for a more efficient operation when browsing generally.

Is there any way to make sure that the file is purged properly every time that I close the browser?

 

Actually, I didn't see any cookie files, or at least not the usual 'cookie' prefix. Many of the files were *.css, *.gif, *.htm, *.js, *.tmp and so on.

There must be some way to maintain this file in a relatively clean state, or am I being naive and optimistic?

 

Another thought. If you're using IE6, it had the synchronize thing. If you ever used it, to delete the files it used you'd have to also select to delete all offline content before those files get deleted. Also, those files wouldn't get deleted when using the option to delete on closing. I suppose you probably chose that option when deleting TIFs but thought I'd mention it just in case.