It’s sometimes necessary to disable your web browser’s cache, especially, if you’re doing web development. If you’re using a legacy Firefox build (e.g. Firefox prior to 3.5), you could use the excellent Web Developer Toolbar by Chris Pederik to do this (on the Disable menu, select Disable caching). But if you’re living on the cutting edge of things and use a nightly build or a beta build of the current Firefox 3.5 (code name: Shiretoko) like I do, you can’t use the extension, because it is not compatible with nightly builds or recent beta builds (as of this writing).
Thus, a quick and dirty approach: First, type about:config into the URL bar. You’ll see a warning, that advises you to be careful. Be careful. After carefully dismissing the warning, enter network.http.use-cache into the filter bar. You should now see the preference of the same name. Double click on the value to change its value. If the value is set to false, the cache is disabled. If the value is set to true, which is the default, the cache is enabled. Despite the name, caching of sites using the https protocol will be disabled, too. And don’t forget to re-enable the cache after you’re done with whatever you wanted to do.
Tags: cache, Firefox, Shiretoko, web development
Shameless plug: If this post was useful to you, please consider buying yourself something from one of my Amazon stores: US store, UK store, FR store, DE store, CA store. If you're not into Amazon, why not donate something to GNOME, Mozilla or Wikipedia? Thank you!
