Am I losing my mind....

[winwintoo]

I was beginning to wonder, but I found out that I'm not and I learned something in the process.

When you're checking your page in your browser, be aware that the browser may not re-load images. If you make changes to an image file and the changes aren't showing up on your page, you may need to quit the browser or use some magic to force the browser to re-load everything (I don't know what the "magic" is, does anyone????)

I created a .gif image to use on my web page but when I loaded it on the page, it looked too harsh, so I went back to PS and softened it up a bit - saved everything, carefully checked and re-checked names etc, but the harsh image kept loading in the page.

After several tries, I ended up dragging a copy of the .gif file to a different location on my hard drive and referenced it from there - to my surprise the softer image loaded.

I then created a new area on the page and inserted both versions of the file (the original one and the copy) sure enough the original one loaded as the harsh image and the copy loaded as the softer one.

So what was happening?? Even though I don't cache anything, and I was reloading the page, the browser seems to think it can get away with not re-loading images.

I quit the browser and started it up again and it worked fine.

Take care, Margaret

[T Paul]

In your browser hitting Reload should reload a page. However, it will often get an old version of an image, if that image's expire time has not past. You can force it to get a new image with Shift-Reload or Control-Reload.

The problem is that most browsers keep a death-grip on cached images. You can usually solve the problem by closing all but one of your browsers, going to an unrelated page, clearing your cache and then restarting your browser. Even then, a browser will still show old images from cache, and you cannot expect your customers to do this proceedure to make sure they have new images. A better solution is to change the name of the image. If your image was product.jpg, change it to product2.jpg, and change your code to use the new image. When the image has a different name the browser will not use a cached image, and you should see the new image when you rebuild the store and reload the page.

One more tip, for Internet Explorer:
Go to Tools - Internet Options- General
Under the Temporary Internet Files section click on settings
Then make sure "checked for newer versions of stored pages" EVERY VISIT TO PAGE or at least AUTOMATICALLY is checked.

Hope this helps!

~T

[winwintoo]

I ALWAYS set the cache to "0" because I have DSL and don't need to cache anything.

After I read your note T, I checked and sure enough I had these enormous cache files again.

My computer was in the shop last week and to fix it they had to dump everything off the hard drive and then they downloaded all the browsers and stuff for me - and I didn't check the cache after I got it back.

I'm guessing that I've wasted at least 2 days in the past week testing changes on my pages and wondering why the browser couldn't see them.

I think this is one of those "secrets" I should have taken to my grave.



Margaret

[T Paul]

Ah, don't worry about it. At least it is now resolved! Happy designing!

~T

[CJ Swartz]

I think this is one of those "secrets" I should have taken to my grave. -- Margaret

Forget about it, this site only has 1,556 registered members plus thousands of non-registered visitors -- no one who'll even notice.


It's a good reminder to all of us to check our settings after having any work done at the shop.