Why do the web specialists tell me to clear my browser cache?

What is a Browser Cache?

The browser cache saves website content on your computer so that the page loads more quickly when you visit the site.  All websites are cached because all browsers use caching technology. Whenever there is an update to a website, no matter how small, there is a good chance most people won’t see it until they refresh their cache.

Refreshing Cache vs. Deleting Cache

A “hard refresh of your cache” is something a web specialist can do to tell the browser to check the website for new content and load that instead of what is stored in your personal computer. In most cases this works, plus you don’t loss any important settings if you were to delete your cache.

We recommend trying this first before deleting or clearing your cache.

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Deleting or clearing your cache trashes app data, passwords, history and a variety of other information that you may rely on without knowing it is stored in the cache. If you delete your cache, be sure to select the right options.

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Most of our students tend to do this without much thought, they grew up with the Internet; and to them, it is just part of the browsing experience.

As long as browser developers are building caching into their browsers, we will need to refresh our own cache to be sure we are seeing the latest version of the web page.