Interesting experience with history in windows

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I tell this story mainly in case you have a similar problem.

I was playing the Times Spelling Bee earlier today. You are given seven letters and have to make as many words as you can using only those letters (one letter is distinguished and every word must use it). I had found as many words as I could without help and loaded the Spelling Bee Buddy which helps usually with clues. And is supposed to update after each word you find. Today the SBB wasn’t updating and giving me the same clues over and over, even after I had found the word. I tried reloading the SBB, then closing the Bee and starting over, nothing helped. I don’t know what impelled me to do this, but I opened the history window (found on the same menu as bookmarks), found the SBB and deleted it. Then reloaded the SBB and suddenly everything worked.

It seems clear that all my closing and reopening was simply loading the cached version and not truly reloading. I hope this story halps someone else. Don’t assume that closing and reopening actually reloads a fresh version.

2

I worked in web development for a couple of years, and this is a really frustrating problem. When you’re rolling out a change (or even testing) and it looks like you haven’t done anything because it’s using the cached version…

3

Ctrl-F5 is your friend. It forces a full reload, no cache.

The server can try to prevent the browser from caching that which should not be cached. But ultimately the server can only recommend and the browser follows that recommendation or not as it will.

Closing & re-opening is ineffective as you’ve learned.