Clear your browser cache with these one-click solutions

Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Productivity

Clear your browser cache with these one-click solutions

by Jason Harris Feb 2nd 2008

If you are a web designer or developer, one of the issues you probably face on a daily basis is browser cache. For those who are unaware of this issue, your browser - whether it be Firefox or Internet Explorer - captures all web pages and images when you browse and saves them in the browser cache. This is so that next time you go to a website, you can quickly access the saved files in your cache rather than re-download the image or related content.

This presents an issue for web designers when they make a change to a website, when their own browser uses the cached files rather than downloading the new version off the server. What web designers need is an easy way to empty their cache. We have two suggestions for this type of functionality:

For Firefox, check out the Clear Cache add-on. This fantastic extension will add a broom logo to your Firefox toolbar that will instantly clear your cache when you click it.
For Internet Explorer, we suggest you look at CachePal. Installing this will give you one-click access to the cache clearing functionality.

We hope these utilities will ease your web development duties. Check them out and let us know what you think in the comments.

[via NoHeat]

Tags: cache, Firefox, Internet Explorer, InternetExplorer

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

yhancik said 1:24PM on 2-02-2008

I might be wrong, but doesn't CTRL-F5 clear the cache (on windows) ?
Now if you're not fond on keyboard shortcuts, that might indeed be convenient.

benwinden said 2:02PM on 2-02-2008

Cache Status is also a fantastic Firefox addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1881. This extension not only monitors your cache statistics for both memory and disk devices. You can also clear your cache by right-clicking on the statusbar panel and selecting the right option.

Marshall said 10:22PM on 2-02-2008

"yhancik," according to the MS documentation, Ctrl+F5 does the following: "Refresh the current Web page, even if the time stamp for the Web version and your locally stored version are the same."

This is not the same as clearing the cache. Clearing the cache will remove javascript and CSS files, which would normally usually not be reloaded when the page is refreshed (if they are already in the cache).

ouj said 9:38AM on 2-03-2008

In Opera select "Tools"->"Delete private data".

Featured Time Waster

Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

I have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.

To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.

Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.

View more Time Wasters