This is such an annoying and timeconsuming bug!
Since a while back I have to clear the cookies each time I change something in my .css file. Well, currently it's a .less file. But this has happened to me before and also my buddy when working with a .css file.
If I don't clear cookies after a change nothing happens with the site..
Frustrating!
Someone have any good explanation for this strange behavior? :)
Thanks
Are you sure your CSS isn't just getting cached by the browser? The next time you modify your CSS file try performing a hard refresh (generally CTRL+F5 on Windows, CMD+SHIFT+R on Mac).
I'm not sure that cookies affect your styling but if you have issue with cached css file try adding timestamp to your css file:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/your/path/to/cssfile.css?{Add a timestamp here}" />
also you can use a bookmarklet(it actually adds timestamp for you):
javascript:void(function(){var i,a,s;a=document.getElementsByTagName('link');for(i=0;i<a.length;i++){s=a[i];if(s.rel.toLowerCase().indexOf('stylesheet')>=0&&s.href) {var h=s.href.replace(/(&|%5C?)forceReload=\d+/,'');s.href=h+(h.indexOf('?')>=0?'&':'?')+'forceReload='+(new Date().valueOf())}}})();
Related
For some reason I can't get the new css to be used in firefox or ie's browser.
I am using php to consolidate all the css into one file, then output it like so:
PHP file:
header('Content-type: text/css');
readfile('layout.css');
readfile('a.css'); //jqueryUI
Here's how I call it from the HTML side:
<link rel='stylesheet' href='stylesheet/css.php?v=1327523109' type='text/css' />
The "v" querystring parameter is simply a php time() function from a tip I got on another search for the problem. Hoping the time() would trick the browser into not loading the cache version, but it is not working and still loading the old css.
When I look in firebug's css file it shows the old css file. However if I directly access the .css page through the url, the output to the browser screen shows all the new css code.
if I render the same page in the chrome browser it shows the new css without any problem...but ie and ff show the old css.
I don't understand what's going on and how to fix it. Can anyone help me?
ctrl + shift + del In both browser will allow you to clear your cache, cookies, temp files, and more via nice checkboxes.
Perhaps the css file is cached in the browser. Try CTRL+F5. If that doesn't work try clearing the cache, if that doesn't work try a reboot. :D
I tried CTRL+F5, Clearing the cache, rebooting...none of that worked right. Then I decided to change the ordering inside the css.php file for the readfile() functions. Once I moved the ordering around it triggered the new css to load. I don't know exactly why this worked, but now the new css loaded.
Decided to answer this here in case someone else comes accross a similar problem and the traditional cache clearing doesn't fix it.
Here is the trick, instead version, just use the PHP filemtime() Function to show your last modified file.
<link rel='stylesheet' href='stylesheet/css.php?<?php filemtime('stylesheet/css.php'?>' type='text/css' />
So every time you modified CSS file, the browser will know what file must be loaded.
hope it help..
When I make a page, link it to a CSS file, and open it in a browser, it works fine.
But if a make a change and refresh the page again between very short time periods, the change is not reflected. But after sometime, when i refresh the page again, the changes appear.
So, somehow the browser keeps the CSS file cached and expires it after sometime. How to make the browser cache no CSS or HTML file.
It would be better if i can block it on a particular domain.
I'm on Ubuntu, using Chrome and Firefox, trying to prevent browsers from caching CSS files on 'localhost'... How to do it...
Thanks...
Something as simple as this should work:
<link rel="stylesheet" src="/css/screen.css?v={CURRENT_TIMESTAMP}">
Just replace {CURRENT_TIMESTAMP} with the actual timestamp in your server side code. This makes the browser think it's a new file because of the query string and it will be downloaded again. You could also use the actual modification time of the file (filemtime('/path/to/css/screen.css') if you're using PHP) which should prevent unnecessary downloads.
You can open Developer Tools by pressing Ctrl+Shift+J and then you'll find a cog icon in bottom right. When you click on it you should see an option to disable caching.
It would help to know how the website is hosted, as you can configure this in most web servers.
Also, it's a good idea to introduce a cache busting mechanism which would modify the links to the CSS files in question when you change the CSS files' contents. Browsers would then reload the CSS file because the HTML refers to a different URL.
A good example of a cache busting mechanism is the ruby on rails 3.1 asset pipeline which also minifies files and gzips them if the browser supports them:
Rails 3 - Asset Pipeline -- What does it mean to me?
http://2beards.net/2011/11/the-rails-3-asset-pipeline-in-about-5-minutes/
The seemingly-inelegant but rock solid approach is to give the asset a new name, when the content changes. This solves the problem for all your users, not just you:
<link rel="stylesheet" src="/css/screen_034.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" src="/css/screen_035.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" src="/css/screen_036.css">
Or maybe (but it's more of a pain to change in an IDE, and sometimes causes unrelated problems with caching):
<link rel="stylesheet" src="/css/screen.css?pretend_version_number=034">
Nothing else works quite as well in large scale production environments, where millions of copies of an older css file may be sitting in various intermediate or browser caches. Some clients ignore cache control headers, and you don't really want caching subverted anyway, at least not in production.
In development you can press Ctrl+Shift+J (Chrome) and turn off caching.
In some sourcecodes i see this:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/style.css?201007071609" type="text/css" />
Now is my question: why do people print 201007071609 behind style.css?
This forces the browser to not load the css from cache and rather take the latest version from the server
see related article
Another trick developers do is to add a random string or a timestamp to force refresh the css page.
That's a way to make sure that clients don't cache older versions of the same file. If the URL is different, the client will retrieve the file from the server instead of from cache. So, for example, if a new version of the site was published, that would be a way to make sure visitors see the right CSS.
This forces the browser to retrieve a fresh copy of the file, rather than loading a cached version. This is important when your html has changed and requires an up to date css file to prevent it from displaying incorrectly.
When I make any changes to my CSS file, the changes are not reflected in the browser. How can I fix this?
The fix is called "hard refresh"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bypass_your_cache
In most Windows and Linux browsers: Hold down Ctrl and press F5.
In Apple Safari:
Hold down ⇧ Shift and click the Reload toolbar button.
In Chrome and Firefox for Mac:
Hold down both ⌘ Cmd+⇧ Shift and press R.
Try opening the style sheet itself (by entering its address into the browser's address bar) and pressing F5. If it still doesn't refresh, your problem lies elsewhere.
If you update a style sheet and want to make sure it gets refreshed in every visitor's cache, a very popular method to do that is to add a version number as a GET parameter. That way, the style sheet gets refreshed when necessary, but not more often than that.
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="styles.css?version=51">
A good way to force your CSS to reload is to:
<link href='styles.css?version=1' rel='stylesheet'></link>
And then just increment the version number as you change your CSS. The browser will then obey. I believe Stack Overflow uses this technique.
I always use Ctrl+Shift+F5 out of habit, it should force a full-refresh including by-passing any http proxies you may be going through.
I had this issue. Turns out I completely forgot I had CloudFlare setup on the domain I was live testing on.
CloudFlare caches your JavaScript and CSS. Turned on development mode and BAM!
Do Shift+F5 in Windows. The cache really frustrates in this kind of stuff
This sounds like your browser is caching your css. If you are using Firefox, try loading your page using Shift-Reload.
Having this problem before I found out my own lazy solution (based on other people suggestions). It should be helpful if your <head> contents go through php interpreter.
To force downloading file every time you make changes to it, you could add file byte size of this file after question mark sign at the end.
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="styles.css?<?=filesize('styles.css');?>">
EDIT: As suggested in comments, filemtime() is actually a better solution as long as your files have properly updated modify time (I, myself, have experienced such issues in the past, while working with remote files):
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="styles.css?<?=filemtime('styles.css');?>">
The Ctrl + F5 solusion didn't work for me in Chrome.
But I found How to Clear Chrome Cache for Specific Website Only (3 Steps):
As the page is loaded, open Chrome Developer Tools (Right-Click > Inspect) or (Menu > More Tools > Developer Tools)
Next, go to the Refresh button in Chrome browser, and Right-Click the Refresh button.
Select "Empty Cache and Hard Refresh".
Since I found this thread having the same problem, 10 YEARS later, I'll add my own solution too. I use PHP most of the time, and rather than requiring the user to press unusual buttons to refresh the page, or myself to remember to bump a version number embedded in a link, I used the filemtime() function to get the modification time of the css file (as a unix timestamp), and then use THAT number as the parameter.
$FILE_TIME = filemtime("main.css");
$CSS_LINK = "main.css?version=$FILE_TIME";
While results in a URL like:
http://example.com/blah/main.css?version=1602937140
This entirely disables caching, since every time the page is refreshed, it will believe it needs to grab the CSS file again, changed or not... but that's far less frustrating than forgetting to manually update this trick and wasting time wondering why it isn't right. You can always remove it from a production server.
If you are using plain HTML, you could probably engineer a javascript wrapper or some such, but that's probably more trouble than it's worth.
Have you tried renaming the new version of your CSS to CSSv2.css and then directing your page to use that? If that solves the stale-file issue, then you're just experiencing non-refreshing files. If not, you've got bigger issues.
If you're using ASP.NET web forms, make sure that you are using the right theme:
I just spent about an hour trying to solve this!
Is this a local custom CSS file? Is this your website? Maybe you should clear your cache.
Also the last CSS declaration takes precedence.
I faced the same problem. Renaming the file worked for me.
The reason this occurs is because the file is stored in the "cache" of the browser – so there is no need for the browser to request the sheet again. This occurs for most files that your HTML links to – whether they're CDNs or on your server, for example, a stylesheet. A hard refresh will reload the page and send new GET requests to the server (and to external b if needed).
You can also empty the caches in most browsers with the following keyboard shortcuts.
Safari: Cmd+Alt+e
Chrome and Edge: Shift+Cmd+Delete (Mac) and Ctrl+Shift+Del (Windows)
I was browsing the html of my favorite site...ahem...and I saw this in the markup:
<link href="/Content/all.min.css?d=20090107" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
what does "?d=20090107" do? I'm assuming it's a date of some kind, but I'm not sure why it's in the path to the file. Any ideas?
That is there to add some uniqueness to the filename, so that when they change the CSS file, they can change the extra bit to be totally sure that every client will reload the CSS rather than use a cached version.
The webserver will ignore the parameter and serve /Content/all.min.css normally
Note: While it's possible the CSS is dynamically generated, this is a common idiom for ensuring a reload, and given the parameter is a date, it seems quite likely.
Edit: Podcast 38 mentioned this...
We’ve been using the Expires or
Cache-Control Header since we
launched. This saves the browser
round-trips when getting infrequently
changing items, such as images,
javascript, or css. The downside is
that, when you do actually change
these files, you have to remember to
change the filenames. A part of our
build process now “tags” these files
with a version number so we no longer
have to remember to do this manually.
It's to "clear the cache" every time the style is updated. I would speculate that whoever is responsible for those styles increments it every time there is a change. It's because the browser sees a different URL in the style field, so it will grab the latest version, even though it's technically in the same place on the server.
As helpfully pointed out in the comments, css files often have their expiry set well into the future, this method is a nice sidestep to cache related headers.
Quite a useful trick.
It is to make the browser think it is a new file every-time to it refreshes its cache.
Very useful when your stylesheets change regularly...