We all know those memes about IT departments that seem to only tell people to restart their computer to fix any problems - well you can do the same for web developers asking to clear your browser cache!

Your browser cache is a wonderful thing - it saves a lot of traffic and helps webpages load as fast as possible. The cache locally information that may not change between requests such as images, style sheets, script files, and even text content. Your browser assumes that you aren’t updating the style definitions on a frequent basis, and that assumption is correct, therefore it stores that small file on your computer so the next time you load the page, you don’t have to connect to a data center but instead you load it directly from your computer which is much faster than having to request and receive it from a web server.

Helpful Shortcuts

If you are using Chrome, Firefox, or IE 11, when you have your browser in focus you can use the shortcut Ctrl + Shift + Delete to bring up the dialog to clear your cache. If you are on Safari, you’ll need to first enable the Develop toolbar, then you can use Command+Option+E.

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