JavaScript file not updating no matter what I do

Question

I have an external JavaScript file and whether in FireFox or Chrome, whether all browsing data is cleared, it will NOT update no matter what. I believe something happened when I made a backup of my file, which I simply added "_thedate" to the end of the name. Then Save As back to the original name.

Now I cannot seem to get rid of the old JS no matter what unless I change the name of the file, which I really don't want to do, or add the script to the PHP page, which crowds it.

Anyone know the solution to this?

Answer 1

You are sure you are linking to the same file and then editing that same file?

On some browser, you can use CTRL F5 to force a refresh.

Firebug also has a net tab with "Disable Browser Cache"

Answer 2

How about adding a '?2' to the tag?

<script src="a.js?2"></script>

The server should return the same file with or without the '?2', but the browser should see it as a different file and redownload. You can just change this query string whenever the file is changed.

adapted from: http://blog.httpwatch.com/2007/12/10/two-simple-rules-for-http-caching/

Answer 3

Are you 100% sure your browser is even loading the script? Go to your page in Firefox and use the console in Firebug to check if the script has been loaded or not.