When I make any changes to my CSS file, the changes are not reflected in the browser. How can I fix this?
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I faced the same problem. Renaming the file worked for me.
I had this issue, I was scratching my head for the best part of two days.
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!
Seriously... two whole days.
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!
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.
Is this a local custom CSS file? Is this your website? Maybe you should clear your cache.
Also the last CSS declaration takes precedence.
Do Shift+F5 in Windows. The cache really frustrates in this kind of stuff
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 StackOverflow uses this technique.
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.
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".
Hope this answer helps someone!
This sounds like your browser is caching your css. If you are using Firefox, try loading your page using Shift-Reload.
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.
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)
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');?>">
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.
Source: Stackoverflow.com