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So I was having a problem with some stuff on SO not working that was similar to this post on Meta which recommended clearing the browser cache.

Now it wasn't working in both Chrome and Firefox and I had never logged in to SO on FF before today so FF couldn't have cached the file itself. Tried hitting refresh multiple times and even tried Ctrl-F5 with no luck.

I cleared the browser cache in Chrome only, and after that it started working on both Chrome and FF. How could clearing the cache of one browser affect the other?

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Had issues on FF today as well, can't figure it out. IE works fine, cleaning FF doesn't help (even its DNS cache via plugin). – Mau Jun 26 '10 at 19:05
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@the belongs on meta votes, SO happened to be the site that I saw it it happen on, but I think the question is agnostic to which site it occured on. I always assumed that browsers acted independently one one another, but this experience seems to indicate otherwise – Davy8 Jun 26 '10 at 19:07
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migrated from stackoverflow.com Jun 28 '10 at 1:38

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2 Answers

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The browsers do not share a cache, but plugins might. Like Adobe Flash keeps cross-browser history and "local shared objects", which can be used in a cookie-like way. Clearing a cache in a browser usually does not remove the information stored by such plugin.

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On Linux they don't share cache, they've different folders. Maybe it's the cache at the web server, this usually happens to me when coding modules for joomla or drupal and some $_SESSION (in php) are still saved and make the website look different on different browsers.

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Server-side sessions like those maintained by $_SESSION often rely on cookies, and cookies are not shared across browsers. Hence, each browser would have its own session. – Arjan Dec 27 '10 at 11:12
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