Testing method: Using 'Private Browsing' for testing sites without cache?

Question

I'm wondering if anyone switches to private browsing mode to test sites sans cache? You know when you have to clear cache to make sure that what you are seing is fresh from the server, surely private browsing is a safe, and faster way to do this, instead of having to go to your settings each time and clearing.

Putting this out there to see how other people do it or if theres a catch to this way of testing that i may not be aware of.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Yes, private browsing would work well for that in most situations.

The only 'catches' would be things like being behind a caching proxy or sites that use some of the new HTML 5 features which are not well handled in private mode at present (more details).

Answer 2

I don't think private browsing actually gives you an "empty" cache. It still uses your current cache, just doesn't save any new files to it. So if you ever visit the site without private browsing, then you're back to square one anyway...

Answer 3

We are using exactly this approach with iMacros for our web regression testing. And after doing this for almost six months now I can confirm that there is no catch or side-effect ;-)

It really uses an empty cache and (in response to Colin) at least for our AJAX-heavy website and all the many reference sites I tested I see no difference between private mode and normal mode in respect to website behavior.

See also http://wiki.imacros.net/iimInit%28%29#Separate_Browser_Instances

For some web testing tasks it is important that different browser instances on the same machine do not share cookies.

Example: Assume you are Google and need to test Gmail. Then you may need twenty IE or Firefox instances running on the same machine, but each one logged into a different Gmail account. What iMacros does in instance A with the Gmail account A should not influence the next instance that is logged into Gmail account B.

iMacros achieves this with the following iimInit switches:

1. iMacros for Internet Explorer

Use the "-iePrivate" switch. Then cookies are not shared between each instance. The IE InPrivate mode is identical to a normal IE instance except that cookies are not stored on the hard drive and thus not shared.

1. iMacros for Firefox

Please use the "-fxProfile" profile switch. Firefox does not share cookies between different profiles. If you need to have 20 separate Firefox instances, you need to create 20 Firefox profiles.