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19

answers:

3

Is it possible force the browser to fresh the cached CSS? This is not as simple as every request. We have a site that has had stable CSS for a while. However now we need to make some major updates to the CSS. However browser who have cached the CSS will not receive the new CSS for a couple of days causing rendering issues. Is there a way to force refresh of the CSS or are we better just opting for version specific CSS URLs?

A: 

The only way would be a bit of javascript causing the browser to refresh such as this.

m.edmondson
+1  A: 

Append a random parameter to the end of the CSS URL included in your HTML.

<link href="normalfile.css?random=123435453" />

That way, your old file name doesn't really change as far as you are concerned, but to a browser it's a brand new resource that must be retrieved.

Tim
Ah I like the thinking on this one
m.edmondson
A: 

Yu might be able to do it in apache...

<FilesMatch "\.(html|htm|js|css)$">

FileETag None Header unset ETag Header set Cache-Control "max-age=0, no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate" Header set Pragma "no-cache" Header set Expires "Wed, 11 Jan 1984 05:00:00 GMT"

Aaron R