How can I force Chrome to refresh a page, ignoring cached Flash files?

07
2013-09
  • David Mills

    A couple other questions on superuser.com discuss the shortcut ctrl+F5 in Chrome. In theory, that shortcut should cause Chrome to refresh the current page while ignoring cached content.

    However, it does not appear to work for files downloaded by a Flash app, such as xml and images.

    • Is there any way to get the files downloaded by Flash to refresh with a keyboard shortcut? Or will I be forever doomed to clicking "Tools -> Options -> Under the Hood -> Clear Browsing Data -> Empty the Cache"? (or ctrl+shift+del to bring up the same dialog)
    • Are other people experiencing this issue? Should I file a bug report?

    Thanks!

    Update: Upon further investigation, I think I was mistaken initially. The .swf does indeed get refreshed, but some other items (xml & images) that are downloaded by the flash app do not. Manually clearing the browser cache is enough to force those other items to refresh, without having to mess with the Flash cache manager. A shift-refresh is enough to do the same job in Firefox without having to manually clear Firefox's cache. Could this be a Chrome browser bug?

  • Answers
  • Arcege

    Try Ctrl-Shift-R (instead of Ctrl-r) to tell the browser to reload the page ignoring the cache. You can also hold down the Shift key and click on the refresh button.

  • th3dude

    If you want a more permanent solution, you could always tell Flash to stop caching content to begin with.

    Tools > Clear Browsing Data > Other Data Tab > Adobe Flash Player Storage Settings

    Once you are there, there are checkboxes that can toggle whether or not flash content is cached on your computer.

    Also you can clear the cached data from here as well. Since Flash has its own data management tool, I doubt any browser would be able to enable shortcuts to clear this data.


  • Related Question

    osx - How can I view .swf files within Mac OS X?
  • teabot

    I have been sent a number of .swf files as attachments. I wish to view these within Mac OS X. I used to drag them directly into Safari and it would display them. However, after installing Safari 4 I only get a blank white window content when I do this.

    How can I view these files on my Mac for free?


  • Related Answers
  • Troggy

    http://mac.eltima.com/freeflashplayer.html

    Update: That link will take you to the free software I was talking about, but just noticed as of July 2010, the company is changing the software name to elmedia player.

  • hasseg

    I have Safari v.4.0.3 and Flash Player plugin v.10,0,12,36 (Debug player) installed in Mac OS 10.5.8 and opening .swf files in the browser works just fine for me. I don't know if it has anything to do with the fact that I have the debug version of Flash Player, but I suspect it'll work with the standard version as well, like it always has before Safari 4. So try updating your Flash Player and see if it'll work after that.

    If you'd like to open .swf files outside of your browser, you can install Adobe's standalone ("projector") Flash Player.

    p.s. You can check the version of your Flash Player plugin by going to http://playerversion.com

  • slhck

    Just Get Perian. It's free and can play just about anything. It has almost every Codex available. Just install and go.

    http://perian.org/